White, short brown haired male game protgaonists.

[Katsuro]

Assassin's Creed Liberation got it's 360 and PS3 release today, and one of the reasons I've wanted to play this for a while is that it's one of the few games I can think of where you play as a black woman.  And not only that, but as far as I can tell from promotional material alone, she's also one of the few female video game characters who wasn't designed to be female just because "bewbs", aimed at the sterotypical "12yr old in a 30yr old man's body" male gamer demographic (fuck you Dead or Alive 5, you lied to me about toning down the hyper sexualisation!).  She looks like this in pretty much all of the promotional stuff - http://images.vg247.com/current//2012/10/assassins_creed_3_liberation_3.jpg she doesn't even have her ass pointing right at the the camera or anything!  Incredible!

I'm not particularly obsessed with the issue of race in games, my main interest in Liberation is I quite liked ACII but I'm not a big enugh fan of the series to buy every single iteration that comes out every year, so I've been waiting for one to catch my attention  - which this did when it came out on the Vita, due to it's protagonist (it is unfortunate that a black female character should stand out as unusual).  But I am quite pleased at their character choice here, and I have to admit to being tired of playing as white guys with short brown hair all the fucking time.  Apart from anything else it's unimaginative and cliched.  I tried to think of all the games with a white guy with short brown hair, but i lost count.

So anyway, it got me thinking about other games where you play as someone other than a brown haired white guy (black haired white guys don't count lol) and was wondering if people can recomend some good ones, not including games where you create your own character nor games with "BEWBS!" as the main character.  So Bayonetta is out, even if people do try and claim it's tongue-in-cheek.  Though games with multiple characters you can choose from, eg fighting games, might count.  Although goood lucking finding a fighiting game without needlessly "sexy" female characters and walking sterotypes (ignore my love for the Street Fighter Franchise and my love for Dee-Jay lol).

[Art Vandelay]

If you don't mind older games, I'd recommend The Longest Journey for having a well thought out and not sexualised female character, as well as being a pretty decent game overall. The same goes for Syberia 1 and 2. Female protagonist with her own personality and everything. Though the games themselves aren't as good as The Longest Journey, they're still worth at least one playthrough.

If you don't mind yet more adventure games, I'd definitely advise you check out the Blackwell series. Bear in mind that it is an episodic series, of which only 4 out of 6 games are actually finished, so you may want to wait for the last two to get done if you're that kind of person. Well written and non-sexualised female protagonist. Two of them, actually, since the second game has a different one. Overall game and story is pretty damn good as well.

[Katsuro]

If you don't mind older games, I'd recommend The Longest Journey for having a well thought out and not sexualised female character, as well as being a pretty decent game overall. The same goes for Syberia 1 and 2. Female protagonist with her own personality and everything. Though the games themselves aren't as good as The Longest Journey, they're still worth at least one playthrough.

If you don't mind yet more adventure games, I'd definitely advise you check out the Blackwell series. Bear in mind that it is an episodic series, of which only 4 out of 6 games are actually finished, so you may want to wait for the last two to get done if you're that kind of person. Well written and non-sexualised female protagonist. Two of them, actually, since the second game has a different one. Overall game and story is pretty damn good as well.

I vaguley remember the Syberia games and thinking at the time I should check them out.  Are they on steam do you know?  And I've seen Longest Journey pop up a few tiems in various "best of..." type lists, again is it on steam or XBLA by any chance?

Don't think I've heard of Blackwell, gonna have to do some Googling on that one.

[Art Vandelay]

They're all on Steam, as far as I know. Though I'd recommend getting Syberia and The Longest Journey on GOG instead, since getting old games running on modern PCs is their thing.

[mellenORL]

Agreed as to the best way to get a playable version of Syberia 1 and 2. The music score in both games is quite outstanding, too. They are point and click adventures, but challenging at times, and the story is engaging.

[Katsuro]

Don't know what GOG is :S

Steam doesn't do anything with old games to make them work on newer PCs I presume?  Seems a bit of an dod thing to do...or not do as in this case lol.

[Ultimate Paragon]

Don't know what GOG is :S

GOG: Good Old Games

[Katsuro]

Oh wait, I have heard of that actually.  Somebody mentioned it somewhere on some forum somwhere, buggered if I can remember where.

[Art Vandelay]

GOG.com is  the site. Basically, they modify old games to run on modern PCs whereas Steam for the most part just gives you the game in its original state and leaves you to try and figure it out yourself.

[Katsuro]

GOG.com is  the site. Basically, they modify old games to run on modern PCs whereas Steam for the most part just gives you the game in its original state and leaves you to try and figure it out yourself.

What about old games on Steam that say in the specs section "Windows xp/2000/7/8"?  Are they likely to work?

[mellenORL]

The copy of Syberia I got from Steam was buggy and unplayable, even after I painstakingly followed all recommended settings to get it to run on Win7. The GOG Syberia DL ran immediately, with no real user-required setting adjustments. It's either got a settings adjustment patch up front or a built-in Win95/Millennium or wuteva emulator.

[Katsuro]

Syberia s one of the games that has Win 7 in the specs section of it's page on the Steam store

[Witchyjoshy]

Technically, Japanese isn't really "White" so much (in so far as the working definition of "white" is "western european"), so pretty much most protagonists of JRPGs tend to not fit into "white, short brown haired game protagonists."  They do tend to be male, though, except when they aren't. </captain obvious>

Of course, doesn't stop us westerners from assuming they're white.

As for what you're looking for, well... sorry, I'm afraid I don't know much :/

[Katsuro]

Never really been into JRPGs much sadly.  And I've always thought quite lot of supposedly Japanese characters in games don't really look very Japanese, when it comes to facial features not the costume design or art style.  Not that it changes the fact they're not meant to be white, it's just something I've always noticed since I was a kid.

Although in the last few years some Asian characters have come along who do actually look Asian.  Maybe the problem in the past was to do with limited graphical capablities or something, or maybe Japanese devs don't feel as pressurised to give their characters more western features these days (if they ever did feel such pressure for marketing reasons, no idea if they actually did or not).  It's not by an Asian developer but I thought Faith from Mirrors Edge looked very Asian...but apparently Asians disagreed (there was an article at the time on some website that showed a picture of the character that had been photoshopped by a Japanese artist to look "right").  Maybe that means I'm secretly racist and that's why a lot of Japanese characters don't look Japanese to me

[Witchyjoshy]

Never really been into JRPGs much.  And I've always thought quite lot of supposedly Japanese characters don't really look very Japanese, when it comes to facial features not the design or art style.  Not that it changes the fact they're not meant to be white, it's just soemthing I've always noticed since I was a kid.

It's one of those things where the Japanese will see an Asian character, and the Westerners will see a European character.

Like I meant to imply, it doesn't really count for what you're looking for.

I know that if you want to, you could play a black woman in Mass Effect... or any of the TES games... but those are "create a character" games.