Hero/Heroin
The heroes in video games are usually represented as bold and courageous characters with a heroic personality and heroic ambitions, but not all characters are the same, some might start off as underdogs and get pushed to have those heroic ambitions and some are trained to do it.
apart from personality female and male protagonists are usually presented very differently in terms of clothing. Females are usually dressed in tight and revealing outfits like in the Tomb Raider franchise where the heroin who is Lara Croft has always been dressed in tight or/and revealing outfits as the image shows.
Apart from clothing there is also the body image side of things and female heroins are usually designed to be overly sexualised like having really thin waist and having slender bodies. while men are usually fully covered with either armor or clothes. Most of these stereotypes are used and abused for the sole purpose of attracting all of the different types of audiences. The oversexualization of female characters in games be it the hero/heroine, a sidekick or a CPU is to attract the male gamers.
But they don't always use female characters to attract audiences, there are also male characters who supposedly have the ideal body image that woman wants in a man like Kratos from the game God of War or most of the male characters from Tekken 6. Some male characters are given revealing clothes, little armor or clothes that are tight enough to outline their muscles.
Jin Kazama (Tekken) Kratos (God of War) Lee Chaolan (Tekken)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_representation_in_video_games
http://serith.com/article/tomb-raider/
http://tekken.wikia.com/wiki/Jin_Kazama
http://tekken.wikia.com/wiki/Lee_Chaolan
http://vsbattles.wikia.com/wiki/Kratos_(God_of_War)
Sidekick
In games, sidekicks are usually quirky, ditsy and funny and are usually animals, they are the ones in the story line that keeps the hero/heroine company from the beginning. Sidekicks are usually animals because of the fact that they are easy to get along with and many players can relate to having a sidekick or a pet and people usually get more emotionally attached to animals more than humans.
Examples of these sidekicks is rush from the mega man series, Dogmeat from Fallout series, Kazooie from Banjo-Kazooie etc.
Dogmeat
Rush
Links:
http://megaman.wikia.com/wiki/Rush?file=Rush_art.png
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/fallout-4-companion-guide-dogmeat-strong-cait
http://vsbattles.wikia.com/wiki/Banjo/Kazooie
Antagonist
Antagonists are the main Villains in the game that will always have something against the hero/heroine and will try to stop them from doing good and stand in their way. In games it is stereotypical that the antagonists are male they also have their stereotypical looks of being serious, mad, hideous, unusual looking, powerful and intimidating. An example of an unusual and intimidating looking antagonist is ares from God of War Ascension, another example is Ludwig The Holy Blade from Bloodborne who is a boss and has a chillingly revolting look but like I said before they are usually male characters.
Links:
http://www.gamearthub.net/2013/04/03/god-of-war-ascension-characters-by-james-vandenbogart/#.V0MJVvkrLct
http://bloodborne.wiki.fextralife.com/Ludwig,+The+Holy+Blade
Collectable
Collectable characters in games are usually shown to always give off a charming mood and are quite welcoming, these collectables are usually fictional creatures whether they're human like or animal like but what they all have in common is that the main goal is train them and build a bond or a brotherhood between the player character and the collectable character. A good example for these types of games is Pokemon because most Pokemon games specifically the ones on the Nintendo DS allows you to fight, capture with a pokeball and train your own creature or monster but as you train them you build a strong bond between each other, the Pokemon series was adapted from the animated version and the animated series shows a lot of the brotherhood and bonding that I was talking about.
The collectable characters have their own unique character design but can also evolve to have improved abilities and strength but will also have an improved character design.
http://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-video-games/pokemon-x-and-pokemon-y/
http://www.geeksundergrace.com/gaming/review-pokemon-diamondpearlplatinum/
http://99volo.com/pokemon-evolution-photos/
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