“Where emptiness had been, new knowledge now seeped inside. Something happened then… I realized I was not the only one, that there were many others like me.”
This is our list of the top 25 female characters of all-time. We’re into the top 10 now, and counting down one by one until we reach the best of the best on Sept. 30.
9) Alex Roivas (Eternal Darkness) – 1 vote/200 points
Chris: Imagine this scenario. You’re a hot-to-trot college student studying advanced mathematics and you get a phone call in the dead of morning. It’s the police. Your grandpa is dead. You travel across the country to identify the body, but the police are suddenly unable to offer any explanations. So you decide the hell with, I’m going to investigate this creepy old mansion that my grandfather owned and that’s that!
Oh yeah, and by the way, you accidentally discover the Tome of Eternal Darkness and travel through time to watch your ancestors kick some ancient ass and slowly go crazy because EVERYTHING IS SCARY AND OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT BATHTUB.
Alex overcomes a multitude of scary and threatening issues that would shut most of us down, curling into a ball and rocking back and forth on the ground while crying. She’s tough as nails. It’s a shame that the Eternal Darkness sequel will probably never see the light of day, thanks to its creators putting together a poorly conceived Kickstarter, because there’s a cult following for this game that would love to see more of Alex in action.
Shaun: Alex begins Eternal Darkness investigating the murder of her grandfather when the police investigators turned up nothing. From her opening moments, you already see Alex is a go-getter.
It’s not easy dealing with the murder of a loved one, but grieving gets especially harder when you’re stuck for an evening in a house that is stuck on top of a portal to an insane other dimension that is home to monstrosities so terrifying they actually drain your sanity, and you start reliving the horrific past of various individuals, half of which end up dying extremely grisly deaths.
Bizarre phone calls start happening. Blood seeps from the walls. She hears strange voices all around her. She washes her hands in the bathroom and sees a flash of a woman in a bathtub full of blood, screaming. She could have left at any time, but she possesses the will and determination to see this through.
Is Alex visibly terrified? Yes. Is she sprouting one-liners and performing acrobatic feats across the house? Nope. She’s just a regular woman who is committed to getting to the bottom of her grandfather’s murder by using her intelligence and resourcefulness.
Eventually, Alex takes the fight to the demon monsters, and it all culminates in an epic showdown with a demigod, where she channels all of the previous spirits of the deceased to aid her in battle.
Is this so different than Lara Croft? No, except if Lara was a regular woman, she would have been dead five minutes into the new Tomb Raider, and 300 times over after that. Alex is just a normal person put into an insane situation, which makes her perspective — and her survival — all the more compelling. The journey Alex takes from “college student” to “savior of humanity” is what makes Eternal Darkness so enduring, and is what launched Alex to the top of my list.
Joseph: [Said outside, in the rain, watching the ATB crew enjoying games, old and new] I’ve heard Eternal Darkness is good.
TOP 25 FEMALE CHARACTERS
Introduction/Honorable Mention
Gray Areas 
I absolutely loved this game. It’s too bad the spiritual successor kickstarter seems to be dead in the water or something.