Joanna Dark

Joanna Dark
Joanna Dark as she appeared in artwork renders for the Nintendo 64 game in 2000.
Series	Perfect Dark
First game	Perfect Dark (Nintendo 64)
Voiced by	Eveline Fischer (2000) Laurence Bouvard (2005)

Joanna Dark is a fictional character and the main protagonist in Rare's Perfect Dark video game series. She made her debut in the Nintendo 64 first-person shooter Perfect Dark and is a player character in all the games of the series. Outside of video games, Joanna also appears as the lead character in all the Perfect Dark novels and comic books. Throughout the series, Joanna fights against the world's biggest corporation, dataDyne, which is responsible for her father's death. She is employed by the Carrington Institute, where she was given the code name "Perfect Dark" in honor of her flawless performance in training tests.

Character design

As a female character introduced in a first-person shooter, Joanna was deliberately designed to "[break] all the rules". According to Martin Hollis, the director of the original game for the first half of its development cycle, "it would be as if 'you' were the woman". Hollis found inspiration in Kim Kimberly from Level 9 Computing's text adventure Snowball, the seductive spy Agent X-27 in the 1930s film Dishonored, FBI agent Dana Scully from television series The X-Files, and the eponymous femme fatale of the film Nikita. The name "Joanna Dark" was taken to strongly reference Joan of Arc, an iconic, independent, vulnerable and very damaged French heroine of the 15th century. Hollis also said they "wanted her to be quite normal, not with supermodel looks, perhaps a little androgynous."

During the long development of Perfect Dark Zero, process for her character design went through several alterations. Images of the initial concept were met with much derision among the fans who criticized Joanna's new manga-like appearance. In response the developers chose to tone down some of the more stylized aspects of the design, eventually arriving at a more realistic appearance. The look was designed by Manga artist Wil Overton. In addition of a tattoo of a star on her neck, some versions of the game feature Joanna with a tattoo of the main symbol from Jet Force Gemini, an earlier game from Rare, on her left shoulder.

Joanna was voiced in 2000 by Eveline Fischer, a video game music composer who worked at Rare, and by Laurence Bouvard in Perfect Dark Zero. American model Michele Merkin portrayed the character in commercials and in-store promotions for the Nintendo 64 game cartridge.

Attributes

Joanna Dark is described as an inexperienced but highly skilled agent of the Carrington Institute, a lethal hand to hand combat fighter, and an expert pilot and driver. She is able to master any kind of weapons, and has incredible reflexes and an innate ability to sniff out trouble. In combat, she is easily distracted and her inexperience and lack of discipline often lead her in dangerous situations. Despite this, she is also extremely gifted and adaptable, and this frequently gets her out of troubles. As Joanna was trained from birth to be self-reliant by her father, she does not trust people easily, especially those whom are associated with the corporations. This is the main reason why she initially finds herself uncomfortable with her new place at the Institute.

Joanna is depicted as having red shoulder-length hair, with distinctive blonde streak that was the result of a genetic quirk. She has bright, deep blue eyes. She has a pale complexion and a slender, athletic build. She also has a purple star tatoo on the left side of her neck, which she got while she was in Hong Kong when she turned sixteen. She stands 5'9" (1.75 m) and her date of birth is March 18, 2000. Although she is usually seen in her Carrington Institute outfit, it is mentioned in the books that Joanna primarily dresses in tight leather clothes, with most of her footwear consisting of boots.

Appearances

In video games

Joanna's first appearance is in the Nintendo 64 title Perfect Dark, released in 2000. As a young Carrington Institute operative, her first mission is to extract a dataDyne defector. In the process, she uncovers a conspiracy between dataDyne and a group of Skedars, extraterrestrials who have established an interstellar war against another alien race known as the Maians. The conspirators plan to steal a megaweapon from a crashed spacecraft on the Earth's ocean floor and use it against the Maian homeworld. However, unbeknownst to dataDyne, the Skedar also intend to test fire the weapon on Earth, destroying it in the process. With the help of a Maian bodyguard, Joanna manages to locate the megaweapon and destroy it. Afterward, she helps the Maians launch a counterattack against the Skedar homeworld, eliminating their High Priest, thereby issuing a devastating blow to morale.

Joanna returns in a Game Boy Color game, which is set one year prior to the Nintendo 64 title. Having completed her training successfully and earned the trust of Institute's leader Daniel Carrington, Joanna is sent to the South American jungle, where she must destroy an illegal cyborg manufacturing facility. In the process, she witnessed an aircraft being shot down and made a note of the co-ordinates. As a result, she is ordered to investigate the crash site, where she eventually discovers that the wreckage belonged to the Skedar. In retaliation, the Institute is stormed by a dataDyne strike team to destroy any clues of the conspiracy, but Joanna ultimately stops it.

The 2005 prequel Perfect Dark Zero takes place three years before the events of the Nintendo 64 game, where Joanna is a bounty hunter working with her father Jack. On their first mission, they rescue a scientist named Zeigler from the hands a Triad crime lord based out of Hong Kong. Zeigler discovered an ancient artifact in Africa which endows individuals with superhuman powers, hinted to have been built by the Maians. However, Zeigler is killed shortly after and Jack is captured by dataDyne, who is also interested in the artifact. Joanna later manages to recue him from the palace of Zhang Li, the secretive founder of dataDyne, but Jack is eventually killed by Zhang Li's daughter, Mai Hem. Joanna then finds her goals coinciding with those of the Carrington Institute. Taking advantage of their resources, Joanna avenges her father's death by killing Mai Hem and later Zhang Li, who used the artifact on himself.

In other media

Joanna Dark is the primary protagonist in the Perfect Dark novels and comic books. In the first novel, Initial Vector, which is set six months after Perfect Dark Zero, Joanna finds herself living in the Carrington Institute grounds and must learn to trust Daniel Carrington, as well as uncovering a conspiracy that may influence on dataDyne's new CEO election. The second novel, Second Front, follows Joanna as she attempts to stop a clandestine group of hackers responsible for some major accidents that allowed dataDyne to take over involved corporations. Janus' Tears, a six-issue American comic book which is set between both novels, focuses on Joanna's attempts to unmask a mole in the Carrington Institute's Los Angeles office.

Reception

Joanna Dark was criticized by Trigger Happy author Steven Poole, who described her character design as "a blatant and doomed attempt to steal the thunder of Lara Croft", and argued that she illustrated the challenges of injecting characterisation into the protagonists of first-person shooters. Despite this, the character was also positively received. In 2007, Tom's Games included her on the list of the 50 greatest female characters in video game history, calling her "all three Charlie's Angels rolled into one" and stating she should be played by Jessica Biel. In 2008, Spike featured Joanna Dark as sixth on their list of "The Top Video Game Vixens", and The Age ranked her as the 20th greatest Xbox character of all time even as her Perfect Dark Zero "may not have been the greatest entry for" her as opposed to the first game for the Nintendo consoles. In 2011, GameFront ranked her breasts as the 30th finest in gaming history, adding that "she's too busy breaking and entering and killing dataDyne honchos to seduce anyone".

External links

• Joanna Dark Profile at IGN.