Alyx Vance. She's badass
The Vance woman is a great addition to gaming indeed.
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Alyx Vance, your companion throughout the two episodes of Half Life, and one who helps you quite often during Half Life 2's story. Oh yeah, and there are one or two major spoilers, but, to be honest, if you haven't played HL2, you won't get much from this anyway.

Also, you're not welcome, go play HL2

This month's topic is all about videogame characters we care about, and this one's for you, Alyx.

She's a videogame character, yet just a few days ago, I found myself worrying about her,(spoilers) after all, her Dad just died in the most horrible way imaginable (/spoilers).

She's a recurring character throughout half life 2 and it's episodes, and she's a damn good one.

That's her. She's not a girly girl, she's attractive, but not in the 'Oh look I'm wearing fucking nothing, but even though I'm in battle, I'm not going to put anything on' way, in a way that's a lot more powerful. She is a person, she's got a personality. Sure, she's badass, she can shoot her way through many armoured combine with her neat gun, but that's her battle AI, her personality comes alive when she's with Dog, seeing her face light up when she sees him, hugging him after he almost dies killing a strider (spoilers), and countless little things.

Dog. He's awesome.

Asking in a hushed voice 'You... did do the math, right?' brought a smile to my face, while my first thought as we plunged through the citadel in that car wasn't for 'Am I going to be ok?', it was 'Is Alyx OK?'. And that says it all, Valve have created a character through pure voice, modelling and animation, and their great facial animation systems, that I really care about.

For one thing, she helps to shape your own character, Gordon Freeman, though he never says a word (And she picks up on it. Genius.), I found myself smiling at the zombine joke, quickly shifting my flashlight from her eyes when she put her hand up to block it, and feeling guilty for shooting her in the face with a shotgun for pretending to be a zombie. (It only happened once, and I missed, thank god)

She's not just another woman, she's a person, she can do everything you can't, and just being with her helps you do things you could never do normally, like get through locked doors. I didn't rescue her at the end of HL2 because the linearity of the game said I should, I did it because I wanted to. And those combine bastards are not going to stop me, much less Breen.

And because she was captured, and from many scenes and happenings, we find she's not invulnerable. She seems it in battle, and she's always got bullets to shoot, possibly because she gets some before going in, unlike Gordon who just hopes he finds some on the way, and yet she's terrified of stalkers, she's determined to kill the striders after her first encounter with them ended so badly, and she's devastated, when the combine advisors attack with devastating results. (TBH, I felt for the barrel).

So, yeah. I have to choose one videogame character that means the most to me, and it's you, Alyx. And if episode 3's first hour is all about comforting you, then good. Because you represent everything I like to see in a story based game, and that is a well rounded character, one that isn't gung-ho all the time, and one I don't need to protect all the time, either. I know there's a nude mod for you, dear, but to be honest, you look better without it.