Who are your top 5 best and worst video games Protagonist?

[Myria]

Best:

1) Aya Brea -- 3rd Birthday aside (and, yes, I know, technically that isn't Aya) my favorite video game character of all time.
2) Reboot Lara Croft -- I don't get the hate, I really don't.
3) Gabriel Knight -- Well handled across all three games.
4) Ben (Full Throttle) -- Memorable and engaging.
5) Rhys/Fiona -- Neither are inherently likeable characters, but they're handled surprisingly well in a game that only barely qualifies as a game.


Worst:

1) Aloy -- Annoying as hell towards the end, no character arc whatsoever, only defining characteristic is Being The Chosen One.
2) Adam Jensen -- Everything from the gruff voice on got on my nerves.
3) Jade (Beyond Good and Evil) -- A mess of a character from start to sudden-super-powers-WTF? end.
4) Nathan Drake -- At points the character is good, even great, but, much like the games he's in, far too often things descend into mindless idiocy.
5) Silent protags in general -- The Secret World was one of the worst examples of this. Your character's world gets turned near literally upside-down, she gains super powers, people come to explain this to her, drag her through different dimensions, tell her she's part of a secret war between factions, and through all of this she stands there looking vaguely amazed but saying nary a word. It's seriously jarring. Destiny 2 is going this route as well... Why, Bungie, why?

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

Best:


2) Reboot Lara Croft -- I don't get the hate, I really don't.

because she is cry baby and always whine "OMG this is sooo haard".

 

[Casual Shinji]

1) Aloy -- Annoying as hell towards the end, no character arc whatsoever, only defining characteristic is Being The Chosen One.

I agree with most of that discription, but is she really the #1 worst video game protagonist to you? Really?!

 

[Myria]

1) Aloy -- Annoying as hell towards the end, no character arc whatsoever, only defining characteristic is Being The Chosen One.

I agree with most of that discription, but is she really the #1 worst video game protagonist to you? Really?!

Perhaps part of it is that the game is still relatively fresh in my mind, but a big part of it for me is that I felt Horizon was a good game that could have been great and how poorly Aloy was written was a big part of why it didn't achieve that potential.

I see that as a much bigger sin than a meh character in a meh game.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Perhaps part of it is that the game is still relatively fresh in my mind, but a big part of it for me is that I felt Horizon was a good game that could have been great and how poorly Aloy was written was a big part of why it didn't achieve that potential.

I see that as a much bigger sin than a meh character in a meh game.

I wouldn't necessarily say she was poorly written, she was written as your typical Bioware RPG protagonist but without the ability to guide her actions. This made her feel like kind of a blank slate. I see it more as unfortunate than flat-out bad. They could've shown her grow from humble beginnings and a humble/naive mindset to someone who gains experience and knowledge, but instead opted for a protagonist who was a noble role model with a sense of justice from the very start. Not necessarily bad, but certainly not very interesting.

 

[Jonbodhi]

Best-every Bethesda protagonist. It's one reason I can play their games over and over again. It's MY character. I decide the looks, the playstyle and the motivations and that keeps me coming back. A noble hero has a very different reason for plunging into this dungeon than the sketchy thief I'm playing in my next run-through. That's because I'm a better writer than the typing monkeys the video-game industry employs.

Games like Shadow of Mordor and Nioh, fun as they are, would be even better if I could just make my own character because their protagonists are personality-free planks of wood, so why not? I really thought this would be an option in Shadow of Mordor's sequel, but nope. I'm supposed to invest in the grumbling growls of their grim...uh, forgot his name. I'll hand it to them, though. I played the Bright Lord DLC and they conveyed the moral corruption of that character pretty well.

Not surprisingly, the exceptions are the protagonists of The Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, and the Witcher, three games that didn't leave the writing to an intern to complete over the weekend.

As for the worst? Two stand out from a sea of bland. First, I'll go with Kratos, from God of War, although that seems to have been the point. When you're playing a character who willing performs a human sacrifice, you can be pretty sure you aren't the hero. Yeah, I liked playing the bad guy in The Bright Lord, but there was complexity there, since he didn't think he was the villain. Kratos didn't give you much beyond growls. I had no interest in the sequel until I saw the trailer since someone seems to have explained to the studio about 'character development.' We'll see, though.

The second would be what's-his-name from Bioshock Infinite. All the metaphysical hooey was undercut by my repeated thought: 'why am I killing all these people?' I know you're playing a killer, but killers can be interesting, and he wasn't. The deep, supposedly mind-blowing ending,which was pretty standard, Twilight Zone stuff, left me completely cold because I just didn't care what happened to this guy. His daughter was okay, though.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

Most games I play have customizable protagonists, but these are the two that most impacted me

Good:
Wei Shen, Sleeping Dogs
I bought into this character as hard as I bought into Leonardo Dicaprio's in The Departed. His voice actor really sold how stressed he was being an undercover cop, and seeing how good the cut scenes were at establishing that kept me playing the game even when the gameplay wasn't that great (it was still good for the most part, just had some annoying missions)

Bad: James Marsden
I couldn't give two shits about this guy, he never felt like a real person, just a cardboard cutout of what someone thinks an old timey cowboy would be like. The voice acting was atrocious, it's like they thought people back then just yelled everything they said

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

For best I gotta go with James Sunderland. Without him there's no Silent Hill 2, plain and simple. It's all him baby.

For worst, I dunno. Any of the hundreds, nameless, voiceless pieces of styrofoam that head your military shooters.

 

[sageoftruth]

My train's coming soon, so I doubt I'll be able to reach ten characters, but here's part of the list:

Good:
1) Geralt of Rivia: Need I say more about this guy? He started out a bit on the awkward side in Witcher 1, but with each sequel, his wit and charm seemed to show through more and more, and he progressed from a dazed amnesiac into a lovable papa bear with a snarky sense of humor. He's a guy who treats the rough hand he was dealt in his birth with a grudging acceptance, rather than letting it control his life, and it shows through in the games themselves as well. Like him, the games are dark in nature, but react to it with a light sense of humor.

2) Grimoire Weiss from Nier: He wasn't the main protagonist, but he was a protagonist, and his deadpan lines, pompous attitude and the way he got extremely defensive the moment you called him a "Book" were all super endearing. The interplay between Weiss and Nier was the hilight of my experience playing that game. Also, that voice of his was truly irreplaceable.



Bad:
1) Altair from Assassins Creed: I got that game with my college buddies many years ago. We all cringed whenever that guy opened his mouth. His voice actor and scriptwriter killed it for us. There have been worse ones out there, but this game made it pretty clear that it wanted the narrative to be a big part of the game, and Altair failed to deliver as a result of his shortcomings.

2) Sam Gideon from Vanquish: Unlike Assassins Creed, Vanquish wasn't really trying to tell a gripping story, but I still feel like Sam's character undermined it. Everything he said tried so hard to sound like a cool hotshot ace that it often produced more cringe than awe. Considering how he ended up, I probably would have been happier if Sam was a silent protagonist.

Looks like I have to leave it at that for now.

 

[Amigastar]

Best:
1. Max Payne
2. Claude Speed from GTA 3 (yeah i know he doesn't speak but i just think he's really a silent cool guy)
3. Tommy Vercetti
4. JC Denton
5. Manny Calavera from Grim Fandango

Worst:
Probably Kratos from God of War (just terrible)

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

Best:
1. Manny Calavera from Grim Fandango(go figure)
2. Garrett from Thief series
3. Clementine from TTG's TWD
4. Captain Walker from Spec Ops: The Line
5. Max Payne from Max Payne

Worst:
1. I remember protagonist of the first Far Cry got on my nerves, because of a bad dub. Would much prefer a silent protag instead.
2. Max Payne from Max Payne 3
3.... uhh? i dunno, some GTA protags? In most cases protagonists are just there, and have half of the characterization side characters have. Most of them are rather forgetable compared to npcs, in my book.

Oh, and picking blank slates you make in character creator as "best" is cheating