Imani is the most notable case. She’s a black woman shooting her opponents from distance using a crossbow with a sniper scope. Even though Gigantic is still in closed beta and very little of its lore was revealed, her description on the official website sums up what she can do.

“We think their sniper, Imani, is hidden on that ridge, sir.” “Then why are you cowering behind these rocks? She couldn’t hit a barn at that dist …”— last words of Commander Sedgwick, House Tesserus

She is a sniper known for her precision and stealth. Her weapon is an enormous crossbow that has the longest range in the game and can deal massive damage, just like every other sniper would in every other title. Still, when studying features that describe her — a sniper, a black person, and a woman — it is noticeable how she doesn’t fall prey to the recurring stereotypes related to those demographics found in other games.

Snipers in real life, as described by several history books and websites related to World War I and II, used to stay hidden in trenches or camouflaged in specific locations, under heavy snow or harsh sunlight, waiting for the perfect moment to shoot their enemies. The deadliest of them are recognized nowadays for how many hundreds of soldiers they’ve killed or how precise they were when shooting targets over two kilometers away.

In video games, most snipers play that very same role. They position themselves where they have a wide view of their targets while making sure to be almost invisible to them. From campers in Counter Strike: Global Offensive to Widowmaker in Overwatch, they attack either when the enemy is under their aim or when their allies are distracting foes, giving them enough time to scope, shoot, unscope, and find cover.

Imani can do the same. Her scoped shots are extremely powerful and can take a third of a character’s life when fully charged, and her smoke bomb ability, which makes her temporarily invisible, can also increase her movement speed and launch her in the air with the correct upgrades. Her builds can make her a powerful killer and increase her damage with both scoped, unscoped, and short-range burst shots.

Overwatch’s support sniper, Ana Amari.

What Imani can do — and could do around two years before Ana Amari from Overwatch was announced — that other snipers in games generally can’t, is be a support character. She can use freezing ammo in her shots as a method to slow enemies, and there are ways to increase the effect until the enemies are fully frozen for 3 seconds. Also, her shots can create slow areas around the center of their hit, even if it collides with the terrain. Her boom bolts inflict burning, causing opponents to take a small amount of damage for 4 seconds while being knocked back. Her Smoke Bomb ability can also be used to stealth allies nearby the area where it hits, increasing their critical strike chance by 100% or making enemies deal 50% less damage while inside it.

The implication is that on one hand, Imani can be a selfish, independent assassin who kills from long range, build up her own damage, and completely avoid close combat whenever she needs, making her team interaction minimal. On the other, however, she can also be a support character that cripples opponents while other melee characters deal damage. She is always a sniper, of course, but it is possible to make her not just a killer, but a playmaker.

Studying her from a western point of view while comparing her to other female characters in games, there is no evident sexualization of Imani. She has a body shape that many women in real life have, with thin legs that grow into slightly larger hips, and wears what looks like a furry army outfit for cold weather, similar to what snipers wore during the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union in 1939 and 1940. Any body part that could be sexualized, like her breasts, butt, and even face are free from that urgent need to attract male players. Even her long boots, which could look like the high heels used to create a “femme fatale” look, as seen in Bayonetta 2 and with Lucia in Devil May Cry, are simply a matter of consistency with the rest of her winter uniform. This point of view is confirmed by a quote related to Imani: “In winter, Imani puts snow in her mouth so her frosty breath doesn’t give away her position.”

It’s always delicate for a man like me to say whether a female character is or isn’t oversexualized, since the design is not representing something I am. Still, by using the points aforementioned, I believe Imani could only become a misrepresentation through her lore, supposing she seduced men to kill them. But other quotes show her lore may be quite far from that.

“The Records division credits her with 104 kills in the Dreytalian Incursion…and that war lasted only 19 days.” “My craft is endless improvisation, for no two targets are alike.”— Imani

The website TV Tropes has an index exclusively for tropes of black people and another related to prejudice. Tropes are themes overused in media for depicting certain settings, stories, behaviors, and characters, and the Black Index shows many titles of articles related to black people represented in rather discriminatory patterns. “Black Dude Dies First,” “But Not Too Black,” and “Funny Afro” show what most of us already know: black people are constantly misrepresented in western mass media, and often the representations are spiked with a racist premise.

Imani barely fits in any of these schemes. Even those considered more positive, like a sassy black woman who says whatever she wants and never holds back, are missing in her characterization — and that’s a real positive. Her color does not seem to affect how she is seen by other characters or how her story is being built. She is focused and there to do her job, which we’ve seen can be either killing or assisting. This point is, of course, the easiest to be blown up by a single interview with the game designers, or upon the full game release, as any detail of her past and how she became a sniper can involve these stereotypes. Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen.

Gigantic seems to be trying something different with this character. So far, they’re doing it even though it’s often easier to let everything slip into stereotypes. However, assuming the gameplay and lore don’t change, I expect Imani to be a wonderful example of a female character in which many other women, black or not, can see themselves portrayed. In an environment filled with skinny white women wearing sexy, short clothes, Imani is a character who deserves the spotlight when it comes to diverse character design.