I'm impressed you hit 9., I had this conversation with friends and we only thought of 3. (Dishonoured, Remember Me and Forspoken)

It definitely took some thinking, and a bit of stretching. Left 4 Dead 2 and Deathloop don't have them as "main" protagonists, but Rochelle and Julianna are central enough that I think it's fair. I'm not sure Flintlock truly counts as AAA (and it's not out yet) but I threw it on anyway. And Jade from BG&E: apparently a director on it said that she doesn't have any race as such because it's not set on Earth, whici I GUESS makes sense, but she's cited enough as black I figured it was appropriate to put her on here.

Urban Chaos was a fluke though. I had never heard of it until I made this list.

i think sojourn in overwatch 2 should count. it might be tough to pin down any individual character in a competitive multiplayer game as protag, though in the game's lore she's a captain for the main overwatch team - the 'good guys'. she's also really strong and part of the current meta...

The reason I lean against this is because games as such tend to have so many characters, and it would require me to start putting in games like League and Street Fighter or what have you. I'm of course glad that those games have black women characters and I love Legion Commander, but the purpose of this list is to highlight a severe lack of representation in these sorts of games and to celebrate the rare instances in which black women are given the spotlight.

yeah, totally fair.

Yeah pretty sure Flintlock is more of a AA budget wise so might not qualify. Looks great though, been watching it a while.

Assassin's Creed Liberation is one
Nadine from Uncharted Lost Legacy probably counts?

i think you could include the sorceress from gauntlet: dark legacy

anyway it's really a travesty that AAA games are so light in this regard. i had to look thru every single game i have logged and this is the only example i could find that you didnt already list :(

dandara

Dandara is a great game, but I would never categorize it as AAA, or even AA. The list would be much more expansive if I included indies!

How about The Last of Us: Left Behind? Never played it myself, dunno if Riley is actually a protagonist.

There's also the X-men games where you get to play as Storm, I guess.

It seems Riley isn't playable. As for X-Men games, I don't know which games have Storm so I'd have to look into it

So two things I wanna mention:

1) My current rule which I will probably stick to for the foreseeable future is that the protagonist being cited may only be at minimum 1/4th of the main cast. This is essentially due to the rule of thumb where most games have four playable characters. There are a good number of black women in multiplayer games with lots of characters, but due to the size of those rosters, it is harder to categorize them as protagonists.

2) anyone else think its a fucked up stereotype that black women are always killing zombies in games, smdh

I don't think you actually play as Nadine in Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. You play as Cloe who is South Asian. Also I always considered TellTale indie?

I was told it had co-op and you played as her, but if it doesn't, I'll take it off.

Re: Telltale, I think like Flintlock, its sort of AA thing, but I'm adding some leeway for that, when these are mainstream enough and have big enough budgets. Like, I'm going back and forth on adding SoR4 for this reason.

It has a co-op survival mode same as the base game where you can play as a bunch of characters, but for the main story mode it's a single player deal where you only play as Cloe.

I suggested it based on the inclusion of Deathloop and RE5 -- both seem like a stretch.

Both Sheva and Julia are playable and are considered in my view core parts of the experience. Even if an AI is controlling them, they are still present, and players are encouraged to play as them

storm's in the konami x-men beatemup

there's also cherry from sor4 but idk how that falls into 'AAA' terminology, like it's a AAA company's property and it had big name talent working on it but it's still categorically 'indie' on a production level

I would love to put that X-Men game on the list, but unfortunately, it has six player characters from the get-go, which breaks my one-out-of-four rule. I'm keeping that rule strict because otherwise this list might get out of control.

Yeah, like I said, I'm unsure about SoR4. It's published by DotEmu but it seems like a small team made it and, I dunno, hard to really judge where that falls.

Looking it up on Wiki, the only X-Men game with Storm that only has playable 4 characters is Reign of Apocalypse, the rest of the games have more than 4.

Thank you!

For a new one, Alan Wake 2 will have Saga Anderson, who is the co-protag alongside Alan.

Added, thanks!

not sure if you have a rule against sequels but Clementine is the main protag again in The Walking Dead: The Final Season. Also playable in the third game but not for much. There's also the Michonne spinoff, but not sure if that's popular enough to count either.

XBOX Show today announced South of Midnight and Clockwork Revolution, both have sole black lady protags. The latter I don't think is on IGDB yet though.

@ZapRowsdower apparently Clockwork Revolution is gonna have a character creator so it doesn't canonically have any protag like that. South of Midnight is popped on, though!