What video games changed how you view the world?

his one.

Picture this: you are a young boy in the 1990’s living in the United States. Boys are boys, girls are girls, and they are taught from a very young age that they hate each other and don’t do each other’s things. You live in a house with a sister, and all the images of women that you’re surrounded with look like this:

Granted some of these characters in this image haven’t been invented yet, but that’s aside the point. All these very pretty princesses who always need a man to save them. They don’t do anything you’re interested in, so… why?

Now, I want to give an aside here that years and years later I’d gain some insight into these characters and learn to respect and understand them. A recent watching of Aladdin reveals Jasmine to be unbelievably smart and resourceful, and of note Walt Disney often drew parallels between his own rags-to-riches story to a certain run-in with a Fairy Godmother. Walt had a profound love of these fairy tales and felt they inspired him personally, and of late I’ve come to feel similar things and appreciate the charms and strengths that these characters have to offer.

But I was eight. Subtlety wasn’t really in my vocabulary or tastes. I watched Power Rangers, I played video games, none of these girls ever did anything having to do with power rangers or video games, and neither did any of the girls at school. Girls were dumb and would always be dumb.

Then I play Phantasy Star IV. It’s a game I find on a whim on the Sega Channel. And this woman bops onto the scene.

Meet Alys Brangwin. On the right, that’s Hahn, a dopey assistant professor who asks to accompany her and her sidekick Chaz in investigating the disappearance of his mentor. Her response is… priceless. That isn’t the last time she does this to him, either.

This was completely new to my tiny, tiny brain — I had never been presented with women in an especially assertive role in any form of fiction (having not seen Alien or Terminator 2 yet). They were always princesses, princesses were supposed to be saved, men were knights and did the saving. Even Star Wars held to this constant. Otherwise it was some high school drama where they were trying to get boys to pay attention to them.

I couldn’t help but think, albeit in more child-friendly terms, “the fuck? She’s … in charge?”

Yes, she is in charge. And she kills monsters for a living. In fact, she has a reputation for being one of the best monster hunters available.

Holy shit, she’s throttling this asshole client for information.

For about the first … what, 25%? 33%? of the game, Alys Brangwin is the party’s leader. She uses boomerangs, hits everything onscreen with every single attack, and has a mixture of support abilities and attacks that makes her an excellent crutch while you level up the other characters. All the while she shares advice and provides direction with her trademark sense of sass. The early game has its fair share of exceptional, over-leveled characters, but Alys, who is present with you from the very start and quickly takes point at the front of the party, definitely makes the biggest impression.

In short, meeting and playing alongside Alys completely shattered my notions of what women could be and what I should expect from them. It’d be a long time before this balanced out and those expectations became realistic — I was 8, after all — but the notion that A) women could be cool, B) women could be assertive, C) women could be competent, and D) women could be fun, and E) women could share similar interests to my own, was revelatory.