Best & worst game characters

Game characters

5 Best:
Glados (Portal)
Portal would be nothing without Glados – a character so crafted that papers could be written about her descent into madness and love/hate relationship with her test subjects.

JC Denton (Deus Ex)
Deus Ex is considerably more linear than any other RPG I can think of and part of this reason is this: JC has to follow the same character arc every time. There’s a damn good reason for this – he’s a hero. He is noble, self effacing and compassionate. He is the center of Deus Ex that interacts with the other fantastic characters in the way you’d want to.

Tereese/Jenette (Vampire Bloodlines)
Few sub quests are as detailed or as clever as the one centred around the Malkavian in Santa Monica. If you know what I’m talking about, you know why these two characters are here. If you don’t, fucking go and play Bloodlines, it’s brilliant.

Aida (Unreal 2)
Aida is… charming. She is fairly generic for most of the game but becomes more and more engaging as the plot unfolds. Eventually, you begin to feel genuinely attached to her until she and the other two characters on your ship die. It’s sad but life moves on, you have things to kill. Then, when the end credits roll, you hear a message she recorded for you just before she died. It’s one of the most heart breaking moments in gaming history.


Gaz (call of duty 4)
So several great game characters have made me feel emotions for them. I felt pity for Glados & Aida, empathy for JC Denton…For Gaz I felt a new one: Respect. Gaz is an amazing character because he is skilled, unflappable and has a sense of humour. We all know that soldiers are heroes for putting their lives on the line for a cause but Gaz makes this feel utterly real.




5 Best Incidental Characters:

The ninjas (NOLF 2)
During the first (and, annoyingly, best) level of No-one lives forever 2, you are sneaking around in a sleepy Japanese village populated by ninjas. These ninjas are discussing going into town to do shopping, going out on dates and why other ninjas are pissed off with them because “she’s still mad at me about her cat”. They’re hilarious and it makes you think twice before killing them.

Sandra Renton (Deus Ex)
Now, having a character run away from home in a game adds drama and pathos to an event. In this case, you execute a gangster who was harassing the owner of a local hotel. His daughter runs away, wanting to get out of a city. You then meet her, right at the end of the game when you’ve completely forgotten about her. She is homeless but happy. It’s surprisingly touching.

The Companion Cube (Portal)
Don’t play that game, you know why this is here.

Heather (vampire bloodlines)
Heather is here for one very simple reason: She dies. She dies because of your actions in the game. Every time you talk to her, you have a chance to send the poor defenceless girl home but you never do and she dies. And it’s your fault. I’ve never felt quite so responsible for a death in any game as I have done for heather’s.

Antoinetta Marie (Oblivion)
Antoinetta (for those who don’t remember) is a 20-something year old member of the Dark Brotherhood. She is completely insane. You only learn bits and pieces about her character but she is really… sad. It’s such a shame that life treated her so badly that the only place she truly feels at home is in the company of other assassins. Sadly, you have to kill her but you can’t win them all.




5 Worst:

Bastilla (KOTOR)
Bastilla is a marvellous representation of what is wrong with the Jedi. She is pompous, annoying, self obsessed and self righteous. She is converted to the dark side half way through the game and when she pops up later I was given the choice of converting her back or killing her. Bye bye bitch.

Tommy (Prey)
PC Zone said it best: There are many great moments in Prey but the main character provides precisely none of them. It’s fine to be sceptical about the after life but I’d like to feel I’m rational enough to believe in one if I’ve visited it multiple times.

Gordon Freeman (Half Life 1,2 & episodes)
Okay so in Half Life 1, having Gordon never speak was more of a budget issue than anything else but in Half Life 2 etc. Gordon comes perilously close to ruining the entire experience. If your main character doesn’t speak (with a few exceptions) you can’t have a plot. Valve tried really, really hard with Alex, Dog, Kliener et all but no matter what they tried there was still the emotional black hole at the center of the game: Gordon bloody Freeman.

The Jackall (Far Cry 2)
The plot of Far Cry 2 doesn’t make any sense and this is entirely down to the Jackall. For most of the game you’re hunting him as he has armed the entire region you’re fighting in. It turns out at the end that he was doing it to save the country in some way that’s never made clear but do you think the country might not have needed saving if YOU HADN’T ARMED EVERYONE?


Everyone (Far Cry)
I don’t really need to follow this up, do I? There isn’t a good character anywhere near this game. Only Doyle comes close and he has a completely arbitrary character shift tacked on in the last act of the game so that’s him out