Rayne (BloodRayne)

Rayne's character was inspired by an existing Terminal Reality character, who appeared in their 1999 game Nocturne. the character went through several design changes, with an active goal to make her as appealing and distinctive as possible to create a franchise with lasting appeal. To this end they worked to give her a unique look, relying not only on making the character sexually appealing but also make her stand out in people's eyes, which producer Raymond Holmes her arm blades achieved. Her design was additionally intended to have a presence "both menacing and sexy at the same time", which he felt made her "a particularly strong female lead character with lots of attitude". Majesco manager Liz Buckley in interviews said her designers had learned from focus groups that boys and young men not only liked female lead characters, but that they paid more attention to them. She added that "injecting sensuality" into Rayne's character design, describing her appearance as "lethal erotica" and adding that she felt no problem using the fact Rayne was "inherently sexy" to promote the character. Additional care for detail was done for her face, after noting focus groups wished to see it as compared to solely seeing the character from behind. Buckley went on to state "T&A will only get you so far", adding that while the character was aimed at a target audience of males ages seventeen to thirty-four, she felt the character had a female fan following as well due to being "empowering to play". She added that with BloodRayne 2 the character model had also been heavily altered, adding "about one thousand" more polygons and using less on her hair to use more on her "curves and body line", as well as give her a more mature appearance. When questioned about the similarities between Rayne and another female vampire character Durham Red from the comic book series 2000 AD, game designer Joe Wampole stated that while similar they had not previously heard of the character, and added regarding their similar appearance "I think it is just natural to put a vamp chick in black leather and either color her hair black or red." Laura Bailey described providing voice acting for the character as "a blast", though added she couldn't say she identified with the character. Bailey stated that during voice acting sessions, the director would occasionally approach her with changes to the game's script; if the dialogue was nasty enough to cause her to blush while saying the lines, he felt the change was good. ==Appearances==

Rayne is a human vampire hybrid called a dhampir, born in 1915. Her human mother was raped by her vampire father, Kagan. Kagan later murdered her mother's entire family so that the only family member Rayne could turn to was him. This was a policy for all of the dhampir he sired or "created", possibly so that humans wouldn't revolt and use the vampiric weakness of the Sun, water, and holy relics against them. In the 1930s, she spent her teenage years trying to hunt down and kill her father, to avenge her family. She led a life of juvenile delinquency; using her vampiric powers and bloodlust to hunt down her father and avenge her mother. Her search led her to Europe, where she murdered several vampires before being apprehended. Rayne is the first video game character that appeared in Playboy, in the October 2004 U.S. edition as part of an article entitled "Gaming Grows Up". Majesco's vice president of marketing Ken Gold said: "Having BloodRayne as one of the premiere 'performers' in MTV2's 'Video Mods' show is a testament to her popularity and appeal." Rayne also appear in a cameo scene in the 2018 film Ready Player One. ==Promotion and reception==

Electronic Gaming Monthly decried her appearance in Playboy, stating that further similar exhibitions would damage how the public perceived the character. UGO.com described her as one of the "Top 50 Sexiest Vampires", which noted that while she represented a negative aspect of video games in 2002, a "scantily-clad heroine in a graphically violent third-person adventure", her feature in Playboy despite not being real meant "they did something right". ==Notes==