By Kyle Holmquist

For Whispering Willows, we decided to go with a female protagonist for a few different reasons. During the time we were conceptualizing the game, there was a lot of unrest in the games industry for more diverse character portrayals beyond the relatively standard white male protagonists, and that played largely into our decision to use a female main character for the game.

Also, this was at a time when most female portrayals in games weren’t very realistic and were (more often than not) hyper-sexualized to some degree. We wanted a game that provided more of a realistic representation, and Elena was created out of that desire.

In addition to that, because Whispering Willows was meant to be a narrative-heavy game, we used the idea from modern fiction writing that interesting characters make for an interesting story and continued to make Elena as fully-fledged a character as we could. Making her female helped to take the story to places it might not have gone otherwise, as it’s a rather emotional tale.

We were really going for a prototypical protagonist for this game as it wasn’t the usual game story, either. Elena isn’t some unstoppable force, but instead a completely alone, scared little girl who’s just trying to do whatever she can to find her father. She’s completely dwarfed by the powers that be, but decides to strive on nonetheless, despite mounting opposition against her.

In the end, Whispering Willows was about bringing the player a unique experience that we hoped would stay in their minds for a long time after finishing the game. Elena was meant to show that even a young girl can have great inner strength in truly harrowing situations.