Intrepid Reporters in Video Games.
- Alpha Protocol: Scarlet Lake is this, also enjoying a chance to get her hands on evidence of Halbech's dirty deeds. Subverted. She uses her reporter status as a cover for her...other career. And there's no indication that she ever runs an expose on anything Halbech does; she is, after all, on their payroll. It makes one wonder if Halbech asked her to approach Mike for that reason.
- Jade from Beyond Good & Evil is a reporter working for an underground resistance movement, and her job is to sneak into government facilities and expose its complicity with the alien invaders.
- Marcel from Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia is a journalist out for the next big scoop. In the end, he loses his job. After all, he's supposed to be a sportswriter, his desired subjects are decidedly tabloid fare (although existing), he makes Shanoa take all the photos, and even his surefire hit story about Shanoa's abilities is subject to a press ban. He never had a chance.
- Circus Electrique: Amelia is initially dispatched by the VOICE to cover the reopening of the titular circus, much to her private disgust. When the Vicious outbreak occurs, she leaps at the chance to investigate a much more compelling story, regardless of the danger involved.
- Nolan Campbell in Clock Tower 2 is trying to uncover the Clock Tower story. He's enough of a badass that, if you take Jennifer's route, he picks a fight with the Scissorman and lives.
- Criminal Case:
- In Criminal Case: Grimsborough you meet Rachel Priest, a reporter who has been trying Going for the Big Scoop in the Financial Center by investigating the affairs of businessman Alden Greene, who appears to be involved in a secret project of sorts. This ends up getting her killed after she discovers Alden has been financing an illegal superhuman project with the army.
- Criminal Case: Mysteries of the Past has Katherine Woolf, whose Establishing Character Moment has her sneaking inside police property to look for advances of a murder investigation. Other feats performed by her include harassing important city figures looking for an interview, tracking down a Serial Killer all by herself, and becoming part of La Résistance against Justin Lawson as their designed propagandist.
- Criminal Case: The Conspiracy has Louis Leroux, an Spear Counterpart of Rachel Priest who, apart from his regular job as a local news reporter and celebrity interviewer, has also been investigating DreamLife and Ad Astra, often helping the player by providing useful information about his findings and such. Later Subverted, though, when it's revealed that he's been working with the Big Bad all along, and all those "adventures" investigating DreamLife and Ad Astra were distractions to protect his cover.
- In the adventure game The Dagger Of Amon Rah, you play as Laura Bow, the intrepid reporter who ends up solving a murder mystery, depending on which ending you get.
- Frank West of Dead Rising. He's covered wars, you know.
- There's also his protégés, Rebecca Chang and Vick Chu.
- In Deus Ex, tabloid journalist Joe Greene hounds JC Denton to get leads on UNATCO's activities. Eventually, you learn the truth: he was working for the Ancient Conspiracy all along, and even his nonsensical writings about alien plagues paving the way for invasion were just clever ways to discredit anyone who knows the truth about the Gray Death.
- Shoji from Devil Survivor. Starting out as a civilian trapped in the lockdown who just happens to be a journalist, it doesn't take long for her to get doubts about the hows and whys of the whole lockdown and vows to get to the bottom of things, make it out of the lockdown alive and tell the public what the government doesn't tell them. How that last one works out isn't shown, but she does survive through the lockdown and manages to figure out most of what's happening, all without any means of defending herself against the demons overrunning Tokyo or any supernatural allies to help her. According to herself, she's "made of win".
- The Dig costars Maggie Robbins, a journalist who achieved worldwide fame through this style of reporting and uses it to wrangle her way aboard the Space Shuttle on its mission to divert an asteroid from crashing into the Earth. She ends up getting whisked along for the ride when it turns out to be an alien spaceship. The other reason she was there was that she has a gift for learning new languages, and the government wanted her as a possible interpreter if aliens turned out to be involved. They did.
- Double Switch: Alex is very much this. She ends up getting a story, and then some!
- Dress Up! Time Princess: Elizabeth Colvin, the heroine of the book "Gotham Memoirs". Most of the story is driven by her inability to back down once she realizes she's on the trail of a story someone's been trying to cover up, and she holds fast to a sense of professional ethics unusual for the period's sensationalist journalism.
- Eagle Eye Mysteries gives us Nancy Marx for the school paper in the first game, and Miranda Eagle and her fellow journalist Tungsten Wiles in the sequel.
- Robert Hawkins in Enemy Front is a New York-based journalist investigating the frontlines in World War II-era Europe to get the perfect scoop. But then he uncover the Nazi atrocities and decides to help the partisans.
- Peter Jacob from Eternal Darkness, tangled up in the business of an Eldritch Abomination because the church he picked to take cover in while moving through France during WWI happened to be one of its cult's bases. As if it weren't enough covering a war, y'know?
- EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Michiko, a journalist for a magazine company who seeks out Torajiro. High profile martial artists and athletes have gone missing, so she tracks him down to see if his dojo breaking streak is related. When she finds out it's a criminal organization behind the kidnappings, she joins up with the player characters, following through all the danger to get her scoop.
- Fallout 4: Piper Wright, the writer of "Publick Occurrences", who goes out and finds stories, like:
- When she found a caravan racket driving up food prices; they poisoned her drink for revealing their scheme and she was forced to down a whole bottle of moonshine in order to induce vomiting.
- When she found the Children of Atom, who tried to sacrifice her to their "god"; she ended up faking a vision to save her life.
- Fear & Hunger: Termina: Karin Sauer, a journalist, is one of these: she's previously gone to combat zones to report on the activities of the Bremen Empire, and she travels to Prehevil to investigate evidence of another Bremen conspiracy. Despite the fact that the city is infested with monsters and otherworldly activity, she ventures in alone to figure out what's happening. She's also armed with a pistol, which she carries with her everywhere she goes.
- Roberto Lopes from Fobia: St. Dinfna Hotel, a Mass Communications graduate and rookie journalist who decides to visit the titular hotel to investigate occult activities, despite rumors about people going missing after checking in and was never seen again. It bites him in the ass when said rumors turns out to be true.
- Keats of Folklore definitely falls under this, considering how he's apparently okay with actually running around in the Netherworld and whaling on supernatural monsters just to get a good story for his magazine. Amusingly enough, Keats - an Agent Scully writing for an occult magazine - stubbornly refuses to believe that the Netherworld and his experiences there are actually real, but plays along and goes on asking questions and digging for clues in an effort to get to the truth (or, failing that, a good story).
- In Front Mission for the SNES and PS1, a reporter named Frederick Lancaster joins your mercenary unit. You'd expect the guy to be The Load but he turns out to be quite a useful team member and ends up playing a key part in the story several times over, all in the name of "getting a good scoop".
- Madison Paige, one of the protagonists of Heavy Rain. She seems to specialize in almost getting killed by creepy serial killers. Madison is plagued by nightmares of being assaulted and killed due to the danger she puts herself in for her job. But this is never brought up after her introduction and she doesn't seem bothered by the events she goes through in the game itself.
- Idol Manager: One of the recurring characters in story mode is a young newbie reporter who makes a point at coming to her stories rather than the other way around. Some of the choices given to the player include what, exactly, to tell her.
- In the third part of The Journey Down trilogy, there's a reporter named Gabi who was Hired for Their Looks and paid to parrot the talking points her bosses gave her. However, she actually hates being a corporate mouthpiece. When it turns out that there's a huge story with many lives at stake, she eagerly helps the heroes and turns out to be extremely brave and skilled at infiltration.
- Love & Pies:
- Eve is tired of writing articles about Global Corp Clean Bean Café and hopes to write more interesting ones. She gets excited when Amelia finds the treasure, so she cancels her article about Clean Bean Café's Zero Muffin to report on it.
- Eve's coworker Yuka describes her job as "basically stalking people with [her] camera, which isn't cool at all."
- Maglam Lord has Julette, the star of the eponymous "Julette's Vivid*Voyage". It is an adventure documentary show live broadcasted to the citizens of Arcadio, so the people can enjoy the experience of traveling to uncharted lands without actually putting themselves in danger. Later, after she gets fired and joins the protagonist after an episode gone horribly wrong, Julette tries to lean more into her journalistic integrity by investigating actual mysteries and reporting them to the wider world, fighting off monsters and other dangers personally all the while.
- Kylie Koopa, ace reporter from Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. She messes with the Shroobs and puts herself in danger to get her scoops, having to be rescued by the brothers at one point, but later in the game, she rescues the Bros from the Princess Shroob and her minions in her own ship.
- Mass Effect has minor character Emily Wong, whom you can help on a few occasions, as well as another less friendly reporter whom you can punch in the ribs. She takes field reporting to the next level when she livetweets the Reaper invasion. And dies a Heroic Sacrifice.How does a human die? At ramming speed.
- In Medal of Honor: Underground, there are several missions where your character, a female French resistance soldier, gets to go undercover as a French reporter, in order to sneak behind enemy lines and capture photographic activity of German activity. In reporter mode enemies will ignore you (and even pose for the camera if you try taking their picture) but if you accidentally draw a gun while looking through your items, you'll have every German firing at you within seconds.
- Holly White in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. Not that you'd know her if you hadn't played the game. She's only mentioned once after her appearance in Metal Gear 2, in the previous story section of Metal Gear Solid's manual.
- Anna Myers, the protagonist of Murder in the Alps, is a journalist working for a magazine called Eure Tages in Zürich between the World Wars. She often finds herself using her investigative skills to find out the truth behind mysterious events and ensure no innocents are falsely convicted of murder. Part 3 of the game, which takes place in Zürich, has the obligations of her actual job preventing her from focusing full-time on the mysteries.
- Not for Broadcast has Jeremy Donaldson, a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who works as an anchorman for the People's Republic of Tyranny's Propaganda Machine and is one of the first to speak out (privately) against the new regime, ranting about the people's right to know and the Bread and Circuses he's forced to take part in. Eventually he has a nervous breakdown and holds his coworkers at gunpoint in an attempt to get the truth out. He potentially turns the gun on himself and becomes an Inspirational Martyr for La Résistance, but the player can ensure his survival which is a requirement for the Golden Ending in which he helps expose the masterminds on both sides of the conflict.
- Miles Upshur, the protagonist of Outlast. The plot of the game follows his attempts to uncover the truth about Mount Massive Asylum for the Criminally Insane by finding documents and recording everything on his video camera. As this is a Survival Horror game, he's also trying to avoid getting killed by insane hospital patients, among other nasty things.
- Persona:
- Maya Amano of Persona 2 fame and her equally intrepid photographer Yukino Mayuzumi are very much made of this. It helps a lot to have a Persona and a full team of other Persona users on their side, though, when they confront madmen as the two Jokers, corrupt politicians, Thai mob bosses, and, oh, yes, the rampaging hordes of demons scouring Sumaru City and effing Nyarlathotep.
- Ichiko Ohya in Persona 5 was a jaded Broken Bird who had a history of Going for the Big Scoop but stopped after it got her friend hurt, and started twisting the truth for sales instead. After meeting Ren she gradually opens up and returns to her old ways.
- Tae Asakura of Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army.
- Resident Evil has Ben from RE2 and Outbreak, and Alyssa Ashcroft, one of the main characters in Outbreak.
- Despite having no newspaper or magazine to report to after the first ten minutes of the game, Jyoji Hijiri of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne still keeps on digging for information in the Vortex World, functioning as the resident Mr. Exposition. The only other people who know more than him are Hikawa (who started the whole mess in the first place), Futomimi (who can see the future), and the Woman in Black and the Man in the Wheelchair. Before the game, he wrote an article about the end of the world and got it exactly right. Fridge Logic sets in when that specific knowledge was forbidden inside a certain cult, and he probably had to get pretty deep in that cult in order to discover that.
- Touhou Project: Aya Shameimaru. Actual canon description: "Aya wasn't covering events; Aya was creating the events themselves." Borders on Paparazzi in fanon.
- Elena Fisher from Uncharted is more than willing to risk her life for a story. The second game essentially makes her into a full-fledged Action Girl who just happens to be a reporter. In Drake's Fortune, she Jumped at the Call. Sort of. She and her producers had already paid Nate for his little diving expedition, and they (and she) really wanted a story to go along with their investment. She gets dragged into the adventure when Nate takes her to the supposedly deserted island and their plane (their only way home, initially) gets shot down. The second game has her in full intrepid reporter mode, trying very hard to prove that Big Bad Zoran Lazarevic is still alive so that the United Nations or whoever will actually capture and try him for his numerous crimes.
- Ellet from Valkyria Chronicles takes it upon her to report everything that goes on during the Gallian War, especially if it means going to the front lines with Squad 7's leader, Welkin Gunther.
- World of Horror has 19-year old class photographer Kouji Tagawa, who goes for what is practically the biggest scoop imaginable: preventing The End of the World as We Know It.
- Two of the substories in Yakuza 0 revolves around one trying to infiltrate Kamurocho's underground so that he can break a story about a secret gun-running/human trafficking operation. Both times he gets in deep trouble and Kiryu has to bail him out.'
- Yandere Simulator features one in its backstory. In the 1980s, he had found evidence that at least one murder at a high school was committed by a Yandere, namely, Ryoba Aishi, who is the mother of our protagonist. He turned her in, only for this trope to backfire against him as she claimed to the court that he was a pervert who wanted a sensational storyline. This makes him a nationwide pariah and unemployable. Worst part is, he's right. And she's crazy enough to follow him overseas after he tried and failed to bring her to justice years later.
