Sugar and Spice in a World That's Not Nice

The old "damsel in distress" routine is perhaps one of the less socially progressive clichés that video games still deal in, due to the simple narrative elegance of a character wanting to fight for something they love. Pretty much every beat-em-up (not to mention most of Mario's adventures) seemed to involve rescuing one's girlfriend, daughter, sister or president from an overwhelming force of ne'er-do-wells. This has the unfortunate ancillary effect of putting said female deuteragonists in a light that either makes them seem hopelessly co-dependent or mere objects to be won after all the protagonist's hardships.

With kids though, that helplessness is inherent. Humans have a natural inclination to protect their young, and so the fact that these are all female characters is less relevant in light of their age and the difficulties presented by having so little control over their own lives. Nonetheless, these little ladies aren't necessarily albatrosses around their respective protagonist's necks: They're occasionally self-sufficient to an extent and helpful in their own way, and are at the very least often well-realised characters that you can't help but grow attached to regardless of this medium's oft-exaggerated sense of machismo.

(Idea shamelessly stolen from Video_Game_King which I then subsequently forgot about. I'm awesome.)

List items

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  1. Yonah

  Yonah's perhaps the typical model of the McGuffin kidnap victim - not so much a character than a living, breathing plot device. You spend very little time getting to know her before she's whisked away by shadowy forces and the eponymous protagonist Nier is forced to give chase. Of course, Nier being the game that it is, the game subverts much of what appears to be a hero's straightforward quest to rescue his daughter, including eventually switching the focus of his valiance to his troubled companion Kainé.

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  2. Suikoden II

  The characters of the Suikoden franchise don't have the GB wiki presence of, say, those of the Fire Emblem series, so I'm going off the game page here. Pilika is a friendly little girl the party meets early on in the game, but is rendered mute from shock when her family is slaughtered in front of her by the profoundly psychotic Lucas Blight. Strangely enough, things just kind of get progressively worse for Pilika from then on. As a poster child for the horrors of war she's a little too on the nose, but you still spend much of Suikoden II hoping things turn around for the poor girl.

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  3. Alessa Gillespie

  Silent Hill's locus of chaos is Alessa Gillespie, the daughter of the malevolent cultist leader Dahlia, who is sacrificed to the demonic deity lurking beneath the otherwise quiet mining town of Silent Hill. Then, of course, all hell breaks loose. From all accounts though, she was a fairly normal little girl. I mean, until the whole pure malice avenging ghost thing.

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  4. Little Sisters

  The Little Sisters of BioShock spend their days in a warped reverie, collecting ADAM from the splicers that no longer need it while being forever flanked by their burly protectors. A kind (or savvy, as the case may be) player will try to rescue them from their duty whenever possible, as the rewards from Dr. Tenenbaum tend to be worth the hassle. Beyond the pigtails and dresses, the one remarkable trait they all share is their strong sense of self-preservation after the ADAM-infused veil's been lifted from their eyes.

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  5. Sherry Birkin

  Sherry's probably still best known in her RE2 incarnation as the precocious child of two Umbrella scientists that have seen better days by the time that game starts. Claire and Leon find her roaming around the zombie-infested Raccoon City and try to help, but she has a habit of Newting it into the nearest air vent whenever zombies or worse monsters show up. She doesn't stay one step ahead of the creatures for long, though, as she's eventually infected with a G-embryo and the rest of the game has the player seeking a cure for her. There's a definite Newt vibe with this list.

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  6. Nina

  Most of the Ninas in Capcom's venerable Breath of Fire RPG series are the same age as the protagonist Ryu, a nebulously defined number in the teens like in every other JRPG. However, in Dragon Quarter, she's clearly a young child that's been through some horrific business, not least of which is the bio-mechanical air filtration system that's been built into her, a pair of wings someone apparently grafted on for chuckles and a missing tongue that someone cut out presumably to stop her from constantly asking why she's being turned into an abomination of science. Dragon Quarter is full of some really quite messed up shit, to put it mildly.

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  7. Clementine

  To say that Clementine's had a hard time of it is an understatement. Probably orphaned by the emergence of the Walking Dead, she spends the majority of Telltale's critically acclaimed series under the protection of Lee, the main character. However, she's not without her intelligent assistance and a sometimes disarming sardonic sense of humor, and she has a keen survival instinct beyond her years. Some people are just better suited for surviving a zombie apocalypse. Me? I'd get eaten in the first hour.

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  8. Nanako Dojima

  Nanako Dojima gets herself kidnapped, eventually and inevitably, but for the majority of the game she's this adorable fixture in front of the Dojima family's TV set, who has long since stopped expecting nice things to happen her and is always elated when they do. It's no wonder the entire cast of Persona 4 falls head over heels for her.

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  9. Marona

  Marona is an orphaned girl who earns a living using her summoned phantoms to protect the archipelago that is her home. However, this "accursed" state makes her something of a pariah, and most of Phantom Brave's early drama involves how abhorrently people treat her and subsequently how lonely she is. She's certainly no pushover in combat, but you feel sorry for her all the same until she discovers people out there who do care for her.

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  10. Suikoden V

  I'm going to have to create some damn Suikoden character pages one of these days. That's only about 500 pages for the whole lot. No problem, right? Anyway, the girl in question for this one is Lymsleia, the eventual Queen of Falena and the main character's little sister. Though she's just a child and a puppet ruler at the mercy of the antagonistic forces that killed her parents, she's got a keen political and strategic mind and finds ways to secretly assist the player's forces knowing full well her captors wouldn't dare harm her. She's constantly proving she's not as helpless as she seems.