9 Badass Female Game Heroes That Changed Everything

8. Commander Shepard (Mass Effect)

'FemShep' as she's often referred to could have been just another custom-character with no defining personality, but thanks to a fantastic voice performance from Jennifer Hale there's a perfect amount of wit, sass, humour and bite in every mood across all three incredible instalments in the series. It might be a strange one nominating Shepard as a defining character being that with each person who played the game their own Shepard would have turned out differently - but therein lies the genius of Bioware's character design. Regardless of whether you played the Commander as a kind-hearted gentle soul who would do anything to help her crew, or a ruthless gun-toting hellion with a penchant for knocking out journalists, her stature and placement as the cog that turns the Mass Effect gears never changes. Another great attribute about having a custom-designed character as your main protagonist is it gets around the accusations of sexualisation that appear so frequently with almost every female character. If you wanted to portray your FemShep as a angry-faced, iron-fisted leader you totally could, just as much as if you wanted to give them the more cutesy blonde hair and blue eyes treatment. Both were more than acceptable, and both ended up making the time you spent with 'your' Shepard all the more special.