Gender & Video Games - Horizon: Zero Dawn (2017)
Young Aloy in Horizon: Zero Dawn
And we’re back! Part 3 of the Gender & Video Games series is continuing on with Horizon: Zero Dawn.
Beware of Main Story Spoilers
Looking back on the paper and the research, I think if I had to do it again I wouldn’t have done this as my next example, but I do think it’s appropriate and is a good example of how things started to change. I would have instead talked more about the modern iterations of God of War and looked for other examples of hack-and-slash games since the previous two examples were both hack-and-slash. However, at the time I was basing my decision on games that represented the human past or Classical Antiquity since that was where most of my original research was.
Moving on, Horizon: Zero Dawn was a big step up from the previous example of Ryse: Son of Rome, and notice that it isn’t that big of a time leap all considered - about 3 or so years, less if you consider how long these games were in development. It originally came out in 2017 for the PS4, as it is one of Sony’s exclusives and was actually a leading factor in why I ended up purchasing a PlayStation over an Xbox at the time. Aloy is the main protagonist and she is a woman! It wasn’t the first video game with a leading female protagonist, but in terms of representing the past, it did do a much better job than previous examples.
Young Aloy finding a past human device - what she calls a Focus - on a dead body. Her first archaeological discovery!
I say “past” although the game is actually set in the human far future. However, it is a representation of the historic human past in that humanity has been reset. Most of the cultures are at least in part recognizable comparisons to real-world past cultures in antiquity, and Aloy spends most of both games uncovering the ideas and culture of the past relics humans left behind. There are a lot of really clever archaeological ideas in both games in the franchise that I do want to cover in more detail - especially considering a lot of the dynamics between the cultures in the game, but I’m focusing on gender here.
I’m going to start with Aloy’s womanhood - she comes from a tribe that is matriarchal, meaning run by the women/mothers and often tracing descent from the mother as well, as opposed to a patriarchal system which is what the US primarily follows today. Not only that, but not having a mother can give the tribe cause to exile someone, and that places a large gravitas on being a woman and having an identity of a woman/daughter/mother as well within that culture. Aloy’s entire character arc in this game revolves around her attempt to find her mother.
Aloy in her first outfit - note despite the game often referring to her tribe as one of the least “cultured” by the other nations in the series, she is not dressed like a “savage” often is represented in archaeological representations of similar tribes.
This is quite important. As noted before the woman’s story arc was predominantly stereotyped as having to do with sexual violence and revenge, but while Aloy’s father figure, Rost, is killed, it is NOT a quest for revenge that she goes on, but rather she seeks to find her mother and recover her identity as a woman and as a person. She has very human emotions throughout the game and is easy to relate to, but she is not a victim of her emotions or shown to be weak because of them. At the end of the day, she is a master of her own fate.
Moreover, what really stood out to me in the context of representations of the past and archaeological ideas is Aloy’s story arc and characterization compared to the Lara-phenomenon. Named after Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series, the phenomenon involves a female action hero that, while capable in the masculine sense, is also subjected to exaggerated body features that emphasize sexuality, while otherwise ignoring feminine traits until they have to do a “shower scene” - or are stripped in another form or fashion (Lynch et al. 2016:568).
Despite being a remaster and given the chance to change the character model and outfit (see the Resident Evil Remakes for comparisons) Lara Croft is still presented with exaggerated features in the Remastered Tomb Raider.
Aloy has what has traditionally been considered a masculine role in video games - a warrior hero - but she does not sacrifice her femininity to do so. She is never overly sexualized even when she is captured by an enemy. While her armor is removed, she remains fully dressed and she is never stripped down or exposed in an exaggerated way, compared to the way the women are stripped down in God of War. Her womanhood does not get pulled into the scene and she manages to hold her own until she gets help that allows her to escape. Even when other characters talk down to her, they never bring up her womanhood as the reason for doing so.
There are others in the game too - female generals, metalworkers, Queens, matriarchs, scientists, traders, merchants, etc. All of them have their own characteristics and are never taken advantage of solely for being a woman. Aloy is strong, stubborn, vulnerable, given a range of emotions and motivations, allowed to grow and mature and have her own arc apart from any male characters, and it was a breath of fresh air after all of the previous examples.
Next week will be part 4 - which was the final part of my original paper - but I plan to continue looking at this topic and perhaps finally add that comparison to the modern God of War games. Have you played any of the Horizon games?
