The first years of the new millennium brought us the seventh generation of video game consoles, and with that came a whole new family of attractive men and women. With new evolutions, this decade introduced the start of increasingly realistic-looking characters. In this decade, we finally started to see male protagonists who aren't weird action-hero caricatures, but look more natural. But the trend for female characters started to lean towards ridiculous proportions that gave even the original Lara Croft a shameful run for her money. We've already taken a look at the 80s and the 90s, but in this third part of our series we'll explore the era between 2000 and 2009. Joanna Dark in Perfect Dark (2000) Julie in Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. ² (2000) Cate Archer in No One Lives Forever (2000) Dante in Devil May Cry (2001) Konoko in Oni (2001) Cortana in Halo: Combat Evolved (2001) Yuna and Tidus in Final Fantasy X (2001) Mercedes Cortez in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002) Farah and the Prince in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (2003) Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball characters (2003) Max and Mona in Max Payne 1 & 2 (2001 & 2003) Samus Aran in Metroid Zero Mission (2004) Alyx Vance in Half-Life 2 (2004) Fran in Final Fantasy XII (2006) Zoe Castillo in Dreamfall: The Longest Journey (2006) Nariko in Heavenly Sword (2007) Commander Shepard in Mass Effect (2007) Princess Peach in Super Mario Galaxy (2007) Nathan Drake and Chloe Frazer in Uncharted 1 & 2 (2007 & 2009) Lara Croft in Tomb Raider Underworld (2008) Travis Touchdown in No More Heroes (2008) Akihiro in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 (2008) Sheva Alomar in Resident Evil 5 (2009) Ezio Auditore in Assassin's Creed II (2009) Kisuke and Momohime in Muramasa: The Demon Blade (2009) Cammy and Vega in Street Fighter IV (2009) With two generations of consoles, handhelds and PC games out there, there might be other good looking characters missing from our list. Post them with visuals in their finest form in the comments! sources: Prince of Persia Wiki, Naughty Dog, Perfect Dark Wiki, Heavy Metal Magazine Fan Page, Bungie, FF Wiki, Dreamfall, Ninja Theory, Megami Tensei Wiki, Capcom To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com