Narratologically, characters are broadly divided into three components. They were previously thought to be three types of character, but hybrids are not only possible, but common enough that it makes more sense to think of them as three components of character.
- Aesthetic (or Synthetic): This is the character insofar as how it contributes to the plot, or the other narrative effects for which it is employed. This can be thought of as character in service of story.
- Mimetic: This is the character as a representation of a human (or otherwise) being. It is not a real person, but one that may "pass for real". A character who is believable or realistic will have some thought put into this component.
- Illustrative: This is the component of a character that deals with the ideas or themes the character symbolises or represents. Not how the character serves the story as such, but how the character serves the meaning or message of the story.
A well-rounded story will strike a good balance between these components, but what that balance should be may depend on genre. When Aristotle wrote his Poetics, plot had primacy (or at least Aristotle thought so), and characters therefore necessarily emphasised the aesthetic component. Character-driven stories gained in popularity over the intervening centuries, though, and the peak of emphasis on the mimetic component can be found in the novels of the Victorian and Regency eras. The use of the illustrative component is both as old as the hills (Aesop, the Bible) and relatively recent (Orwell).
And what of Hollywood (and, by extension, the Hollywood-aping medium of video games, which is what we're really talking about here). By and large, it's gone back to Aristotelian Poetics. One could argue that that's a cynical move that allows low-risk manufacturing of stories according to a proven formula, and that might not be wrong, but what I'm more interested in is what effect emphasising the aesthetic component has.
If we unpack what the aesthetic component means, it means characters being used to serve a story. And that's not wrong, but it does have some problematic side-effects. First of all, it leads to characters being valued for their dramatic usefulness. Secondly, it creates situations where any character who has the desired technical effect will do. Right away, then, Aristotelian Poetics is a formula that creates a need for, respectively, instrumentality and fungibility, which are two of the key components Martha Nussbaum identified of objectification (it's arguable that denial of subjectivity is also present: at the very least subjective experience of characters is conveniently ignored when it doesn't suit the plot). Particularly against a cultural white-male-default backdrop where women and people of colour have "known technical dramatic effects" in stories, this is a problem.
This also gives a clue as to what calls for "more realistic" female characters means. The "But escapism!" argument isn't one I'm unsympathetic to. Realism is boring. However, what we are talking about isn't necessarily realism per se, but about paying more attention to the mimetic component of female characters. 'Realism' is a strawman (albeit one perpetuated by the people calling for it not having the technical language to explain what they mean): what we're really talking about is merely less one-dimensional characters. And if you're against that, then I don't know what to tell you.
