Dishonored 2 - Female Protagonist

Gamecrate reports that Dishonored 2 has a female protagonist because...

Feminist Frequency paved the way for a playable female protagonist in Dishonored 2

Unlike the original Dishonored, which featured two different male protagonists (one in the main game and another in the optional DLC campaign), Dishonored 2 allows players to control either returning protagonist Corvo Attano or his adult daughter, Empress Emily Kaldwin. According to developer Arkane Studios, the decision to make Emily a playable character in the sequel was based off of negative feedback it received for the first game.

More specifically, Arkane co-creative director Harvey Smith said that it was critic Anita Sarkeesian’s analysis of Dishonored, which she offered through her web series Feminist Frequency, which promoted the studio to re-evaluate how it portrayed women in the series. It was only after Dishonored was released that Smith and his team realized the game contained a very limiting portrayal of women as a whole:

“At first you take some criticism and you go, ‘Wait a minute,’ and then you go look and it’s like, ‘Wow, every woman in Dishonored is either a servant, a prostitute, a witch, a queen, a little girl, or a mistress. We had a mistress. That was not our intention.”

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Thanks Farflame!