Troublesome female friends

Written in 2022

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Like written in our love and rpg series of articles, video games are often designed to appeal to the main audience that buys the games. And many players of video games are still males in their teens and twenties. Given the statistics, most of them are attracted to women, and so it is an obvious choice for developers to have the main hero of the game being a straight male, and the first companion be either a childhood friend, or a female, or both.

One of the typical traits of lead female companions (other than being a "damsel in distress" is to lead the hero into trouble by being too curious or too stubborn.

Secret of Mana

One of the most famous examples that many players experienced since the early 90s is Primm from Secret of Mana. A strong young woman from noble heritage wants to save her loved one whom her father sent away to a dangerous mission so that he can proceed with a staged marriage for his daughter.

Randi, the hero, agrees to help her out and save Dyluck, her loved one. Primm pushes her agenda quite forcefully, so Randi has no other chance than to help her.

Chrono Trigger

A similar character, but with a bit of a different attitude is Marle from Chrono Trigger. She also is of noble heritage and sneaks out of the castle in order to experience a fair that's currently residing in her country's capital.

There she meets Crono and asks if they could stick around for a while. Excited and curious, she agrees to enter an attraction created by Crono's friend and gets lost in the process. It is now Crono's duty to get her back.

Tales of Vesperia

Another example with a similar outcome but slightly different behaviour is Estelle from Tales of Vesperia.

She is a royal princess and escapes the castle in search of someone. The main hero, Yuri, accompanies her and the party often gets in trouble as Estelle is very strong willed and can't leave matters she sees as important unattended.

A thing about Estelle is that the acts relatively authentical while insisting that the party should go according to her will. She always has a somewhat good reasoning behind her actions.

Which again, leaves the party in trouble and causes the main hero fixing the issue.

All of these examples depict the women as somewhat strong, but also as troublemakers who eventually need the players and the players' male main character to fix the trouble they caused.

Back to the cliche selection.