Top 10 Favorite Video Game Characters

[eclipse]

I'm only doing five, since I did five before in the topic that was linked.

10. Savina (Baten Kaitos) - Comes across as a complete badass, despite her goofy wings. To make things even better, she moved to Hawaii Anuenue.

9. Hanbei (Pokemon Conquest) - Screw the story, he'd rather sleep.

8. Malik Caesar (Tales of Graces) - He is an absolute troll, right down to his character design (how many people would peg him as the mage of the game, based on his artwork?)

7. Fauxnel (Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume) - It's not his main game performance that caught my attention. It's his amazing battle quotes and the stuff he did in Seraphic Gate. Otherwise, this spot would go to Valmur.

6. Yuri Lowell (Tales of Vesperia) - I don't care if I haven't played this game yet. Here we have a Tales hero who isn't whiny/arrogant/otherwise annoying and doesn't try to get into the female lead's pants. I heart him already.

[Rapier]

In no particular order...

1st - Zero (Mega Man X/Mega Man Zero):

I simply like his Anti-Hero attitude, he doesn't fight for the greater good or for morals, but for what he believes in (his one and only Heroic BSOD was when he said "WHAT AM I FIGHTING FOR?!"). All his dialogues are pretty awesome too.

Maybe I like him more than X because the first MMX game I've played was Mega Man X4. It focused on him way more than on X, and his script is much better.

2nd - X (Mega Man X/Mega Man Zero)

I love his character development. He goes from a naive and well-intentioned Hunter to a more responsible and independent one, becoming more mature on each game. Always trying to find the best resolution, but having to bear with a cruel reality and take choices he'd rather not take, fighting for his ideals.

Until Mega Man Zero, where he finally beats Sigma and creates Neo Arcadia - the perfect community for humans and reploids of which he always dreamed of. But the height on his shoulders turns him into a responsible leader and the once immature and well-intentioned idealist version of X dies.

This dialogue of his is especially sad:

Unknown-X: Since you disappeared I've been fighting this war alone against an uncountable number of Mavericks for nearly a hundred years... Battle after battle... So painful and so sad... But the hardest part was when I discovered that I no longer cared about fighting enemies... [unknown X shows himself as X.] X: I'll leave this world to you... Please allow me... to rest in peace... for a while... ......... I'm sorry, Zero...

3rd - Yggdra (Yggdra Union)

Starts as a typical princess who must fight agaisnt The Empire and reclaim her kingdom, but she matures a lot on the get go.

On Chapter 5, she does not really wish to fight Gulcasa anymore - she only attacks him because that would be the only way to achieve peace and stop the war. On Chapter 6 she kills many innocent people just because they're agaisnt her while regretting it, but accepting the burden she has to carry. If I'm not mistaken, she even tries to convince Gulcasa into stopping the war, even after he killed her parents.

4th - Tails (Sonic the Hedgehog)

On his first game, he just follows Sonic around and helps h im with a few minor things. On each game he participated, he was a supporting character more than anything else... Well, until Sonic Adventure, where he stands agaisnt Eggman on his own. In Sonic Adventure 2, Tails is Eggman's main rival. His character growth is amazing and I've liked him since the first time I played Sonic 2 on my childhood. :3

5th - Colonel (Mega Man X)

Imo he's the best boss of the X series. His reason to fight can be seen as a foolish way to start a war by rebelling and refusing to cooperate with the Hunters, but I see it as a war for freedom. Reploids are only made to aid humans on their lives, so the Repliforce didn't know about anything else other than living for their human masters. When the Maverick Hunters injustly judged them for Mavericks after the Sky Lagoon Incident, they decided to live freely from human jurisdiction on a Reploid Utopia. Of course, the Maverick Hunters did not see that as a good thing.

I see the war as an excuse to achieve the freedom they were longing for. They would never be free as long as they kept acting as tools made to work for humans. The dishonor brought on them only gave the Repliforce a 'push'.

Colonel's death was the most tragic case, in my opinion. He knew he was going to die, but he accepted his fate. In Zero's Route, he leaves Iris to him just before dying.

I can't think about other characters right now, but I'm pretty sure I have more favorites.

[Fala]

1. Maxim from Lufia II. Is The Hero in Spades and I was really sad when the game ended. Honorable Mentions go to Maxim's kick-ass wife Selan.<br><br>2. Sarah from Shining Force II. I would have loved for her and Bowie become a Battle Couple but the game decided to pull a fast one and paired off the main character with a useless princess who defines 'Dumb-ass in distress' many, many times over because EVERYONE decided to become Shippers on Deck. Words are not enough to describe the rage.<br><br>3. Cielo from Digital Devil Saga. This guy is funny and awesome and he knows it. He has an epic bromance or AKA Heterosexual Life Partners with The Spock, Gale who gets Honorable Mentions.<br><br>4. Ken Amada from Persona 3. He's wise beyond his years and is actually more versitile then most of the cast save Akihiko, Aigis and the MC.<br><br>5. Chie Satonaka from Persona 4. She is awesome and I like her Weapon of Choice.<br><br>6. Kairi from Kingdom Hearts. She gets WAY TOO MUCH flak from fangirls.<br>

Edited August 13, 2012 by Fala

[tenkiforecast]

Well, let's see...

A number of these are probably different from other people's, just because if a character has some sort of emotional issue similar to ones that I have experienced, they immediately jump up in my mind. So expect a few odd choices.

Because I tend to be walls of text, explanations are in spoiler tags. Also because of spoilers.

Honorable Mentions:

Sigurd, FE4: He's here mainly because while I really like his character, all of the events in-game are outside of his growth. He is very reactionary, and the ones listed I find more interesting.

The Nameless One, Planescape Torment: This guy is here because this game is one of the most philosophical games ever created. He has to question the nature of man, the nature of life, all while exploring why he is somehow immortal and what crimes his previous incarnations committed. Also, this is one of the only times when the "evil" type character path is more like soulless human beings--manipulative, abusive, cunning, and destroying the minds of his compatriots. Most "evil" paths are along the lines of "I'm so evil I'm going to curb-stomp kittens!!", TNO's paths are "I will destroy your mind and break you to my will."

Kyle Katarn, Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games: He is here mainly because he is the genre savvy badass of the Star Wars games. He doesn't have a ton of characterization, but when you snark about how overly complicated some levels are and rock a beard of manliness, who cares?

Samus Aran, Metroid series (MINUS OTHER M I DO NOT CONSIDER THAT CANON): Samus is one of those characters that you can infer a personality without dialogue. While this was not that prevent until the Metroid Prime games, you could still assume that she is used to warfare and exploration of rather terrifying areas. My favorite cutscene in any Metroid game helps illustrate some of her history--Metroid Prime, the final scene after escaping the Impact Crater. If Samus takes her helmet off, you see the pain on her face as the Chozo shrine--the shrine of her adoptive people--is destroyed. That helps cement a connection with her past and pain at losing her heritage without any forced and retarded dialogue. Still, she doesn't have a huge character. The heroic mime's best example is listed in my top 10.

Reapers, Mass Effect Trilogy: I guess I have a fondness for the Cthulhu type mythology. The Reapers fit many of the H.P. Lovecraftian horror qualifications. They have a logic that is 'beyond organic life' and are supremely powerful. Their mere presence, alive or dead, is enough to warp the minds of even the strongest individuals into serving them. They have wiped out Galactic Civilizations thousands of times, and view the most successful leader against them simply as an annoyance. And let's not mention the ending, please...

10. Magus, Chrono Trigger

You have to admire a character that can rise from obscurity to control huge armies under a pretense that he just ignores. Magus leads the non-human armies by proxy, while he attempts to accomplish his real goal: Summon and destroy Lavos. He is one of the best examples of a video game anti-hero. He has done terrible things in the past (curing Glenn/Frog and killing Cyrus for example) all so he can destroy the entity that led to his mother's insanity and imprisonment(? Chrono Cross is really, really weird) of his sister. In-game, the leadup to Magus is phenomenal. You charge through his castle, defeat his elite generals, and finally reach the sorcerer himself. The boss fight is one of the most memorable in Chrono Trigger, and his boss theme is one of the best on the SNES. His character is not that complex, but he is so memorable that he deserves a spot.

9. HK-47, Knights of the Old Republic

HK-47 is not an extremely complex character, being an assassination droid, but dear lord is he hilarious. He is rather one-note in KOTOR 1, but he still became a fan favorite because of his comedic sociopathy. KOTOR II does develop him somewhat, emphasizing his love of efficiency in assassinations and not enjoying wanton slaughter. He offers one of the weirdest definitions of love as well, "Definition: 'Love' is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometers away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope... Love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticule, and together, achieving a singular purpose against statistically long odds"

8. Big Boss/Naked Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3

I really admire the storytelling in MGS3. MGS2 is notable for being post-modern, questioning the nature of sequels and yadda yadda, it was Kojima trying to piss off all the fans of Metal Gear Solid. Thankfully he didn't do that for MGS3, and it works better because of it. Naked Snake is broken harder than any other MGS character. He starts out as a loyal American soldier, and then The Boss defects to Russia. His mentor. The next mission leads to him killing his mentor's close friends, getting a eye shot out, a weird stalker with a torture fetish (Ocelot!), being betrayed by a woman he began to trust (Eve), and learning directly from The Boss what happened. The US Government set most of his mission up ahead of time to get rid of the Shagohod, and when the main villain of the game, Volgin, threw a wrench into their plan they send Snake in to kill both him and The Boss. The Boss knew, and accepted it as her duty. Having to kill The Boss hurts. This breaks Naked Snake, and seeing his progression through MGS3 is extremely rewarding. He's a very well-written character for what I think is the best-written MGS game.

7. Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic II

KOTOR II is one of the best examples of why you should not rush games out for holiday launches. Even with tons of cut content and a hilariously rushed ending, Kreia stands out as one of the best things in this series. Kreia is not a Jedi, not really a Sith, she is gray. She is in the middle, not really following a "Dark" or "Light" side of the force and forces the player to ask questions. Is being genuinely kind to everyone a good thing? Can one kind act lead to another evil act? What is the true nature of evil? What is the true nature of good? Kreia is a character who has experienced horrible things in her life, despises the Force, and her ability to use it. She injects morality into the Star Wars universe that not automatically good versus bad. The Jedi Order is seen as villainous in KOTOR, and Kreia points out their hypocrisies. Her war is one of ideals, not raw strength. She is shrouded in mysteries through the entire game, and only upon replaying KOTOR II can players start to dissect her character.

6. Midna, Zelda: Twilight Princess

Nintendo spent a lot of time into creating the "companion" character for any incarnation of Link. I guess they needed an explanation for the lock-on features of the games, but that doesn't work with the GBA and DS titles. Maybe they thought that Navi was part of what made Ocarina of Time so memorable! Well, yes, but for the wrong reason. Ever since Ocarina, however, all the ally characters were not obnoxious and tedious (except Fi, you backpedaled hard, Nintendo). Tatl was not annoying, the King of Red Lions was a very good addition in Wind Waker, and then we got Midna in Twilight Princess. Midna shows a huge growth in character through the game, both an attachment to Link and fighting to regain her kingdom. She is also a snarky little bugger who enjoys prodding Link and testing him. She has a very odd personality--she is royalty yet she considers herself unworthy of Zelda's help because she lost to Zant. However she has no problem in insulting Link or prodding him on. There are a lot of little details to her character, plus good dialogue, that endear her to me.

5. GLaDOS, Portal Series

Portal and its sequel are two games I would cite as being exemplar examples of writing in video games. GLaDOS is one of the reasons why the writing works so dang well. GLaDOS is a more comedic and sociopathic HAL 9000 who loves putting individuals through lethal 'experiments' which boil down to watching human beings die trying to get through a room. Throughout the first game, GLaDOS is providing 'encouragement' to Chell, the main character, while mocking her at the same time. "You euthanized your faithful companion cube faster than anyone else on record. Congratulations." When Chell breaks out, GLaDOS's dialogue becomes even more sinister and manipulative. The dialogue is too good to just explain, go to youtube and search GLaDOS dialogue. Portal 2 helps develop GLaDOS's personality and backstory. This time, GLaDOS is much more upfront about insulting Chell and humanity, and the resulting lines are hilarious. All while trying to kill Chell using the experiments. Yes, there is more to develop GLaDOS's character, but I'm not going to touch on that right now. GLaDOS is definitely one of my favorite villains in any media.

4. Kefka, Final Fantasy VI

I have wondered whether the character designers at Squaresoft watched Stephen King's IT right before working on FFVI. That, or they were reading some of the Joker stories from Batman's comic storylines, or just the 1989 movie. Either way Kefka is, in my eyes, one of those perfect villains. He is a psychopathic manchild, one not really portrayed for comedy. Sure, he starts out funny and some of his dialogue even at the end of the game is hilarious, "You sound like lines from a self-help booklet!", but he turns deathly serious. Kefka is very parallel to the Joker. Yes, he has funny scenes. He dresses up like a clown. He is a psychopath who loves killing and torture. He poisons Doma's water supply for the hell of it, and laughs when confronted. He is the active one in carrying out Gestahl's plans and shows a manipulative side, managing to exploit mistrust in Celes at the Magitek Factory. Then, after Celes proves she wishes to leave the empire, he snaps even harder. Then he becomes the God of Nihilism and works to destroy everything humanity tries to build. He grows as a villain along the heroes of the game, as they grow stronger and as characters. The fact he starts off as a comedic character helps establish how terrifying he becomes.

3. Lucas, Mother 3

There are very few games that I will refer someone to as a piece of art. Portal and Portal 2, which I have already mentioned, are in that category. The other three are Shadow of the Colossus (setting a beautiful environment while telling a story with minimal text), Okami (a very stylized game that works wonders, and is one of the few things that the term "Epic" is used correctly), and Mother 3 (sheer brilliance in storytelling). Mother 3 can hit so many emotional cords with its various themes: the destruction of Eden, the fallibility of man, corruption of the environment, and basic origins of villainy (Pokey/Porky and Isaac, simply because they were unloved or ignored). The one that hits home the most, I believe, are the familial themes. The beginning of the game shows Lucas's family being torn apart by the sacrifice of his mother. His twin brother vanishes and is presumed dead by all but Flint, his father. Flint then ignores Lucas to try and find his lost son in the grief over his wife's death. Lucas is one of the heroic mime character, and one of the times when it works wonders. We do not need words to see Lucas's grief over his mother's death, even years after it occurred. Words are unnecessary to show Lucas's disconnect from everything around him, for the better in his case. And Chapter 6 of the game is one of the most emotionally powerful scenes I've watched, only topped by the finale of the game. All of these events tie into Lucas and his actions to find out what is wrong with the world. The game is phenomenal. Download the ROM, download the English patch, and play it.

2. Rise Kujikawa, Persona 4

I would expect that Rise is not the favorite character for most people when playing Persona 4. I think she is probably the least liked of the female cast, actually. Why exactly do I like Rise then? It comes down to her story arc and character growth. Rise does not really know who she is when she appears in the game. Her idol personality is not really her own, but she has been acting like that for years. It was her effort to connect to people, to try to be more outgoing. As a result she lost who she was internally. The same end happened to me, for a time I did not really know who I was as an individual. It took a few months with a psychiatrist to sort that out. Of course, Seta/Yu/whatever protagonists's name is is a phenomenal psychiatrist and solves the cast's issues easily. Rise's boiled down to fearing the entertainment industry because of her identity issues. When she accepted that her idol personality was part of her, accepting that mask as an aspect of her identity, she starts to resolve those problems.

1. Squall Leonheart, Final Fantasy VIII

Okay, I know this sounds insane, I really do. Here is the thing though: when I started reading and learning about FF8 through various LPs and some speedrun strategies, I learned about the story of this game. I saw this character and immediately connected to him because he deals with many of the same emotional problems I have to deal with. Squall is a rarity in video games--a character with depression and severe emotional issues written correctly. He is a loner due to abandonment issues. He is afraid of the world, afraid of being hurt, and that comes across quite well. At least I think so, given that I saw exactly what Squall was doing. Squall is a scared kid, really, a scared kid forced into horrible situations, fighting as a child soldier while dealing with depression and abandonment. The real story of the game, where it works, is developing both Squall and Rinoa. The game forces these two characters to grow up. Rinoa is forced to address her daddy issues and start accepting responsibility for her actions, stop living in a fantasy world. Squall is forced to make attachments, engage the world instead of withdrawing from it, and learn that his way of living before the game started was not really life. This is where FF8 shines in my eyes. The rest of the plot...um...has issues.

[OrangeCrush980]

10. Fiora (Xenoblade)

9. Yuna (Final Fantasy X)

8. Lute (Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones)

7. Isaac (Golden Sun)

6. Sain (Fire Emblem 7)

5. Wylfred (Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume)

4. Estelle Bright (The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky)

3. Pascal (Tales of Graces)

2. Stocke (Radiant Historia)

1. Kratos Aurion (Tales of Symphonia)

Edited October 6, 2012 by OrangeCrush

[Sunwoo]

This is the part where I realize that I really don't play a lot of games other than FE. X_x Well, I'll try anyway. In no particular order:

1. Tormod (FE9/10)

2. Rath (FE7)

3. Neku Sakuraba (TWEWY)

4. Beat Bito (TWEWY)

5. Sho Minamimoto (TWEWY) -- I normally don't like villains, but his math nuttiness really did the trick

6. Mario (Mario series)

7. Maxwell (Scribblenauts series)

8. Phoenix Wright (AA)

9. Miles Edgeworth (AA)

10. Kirby (Kirby series)

It disturbs me to a degree that none of the characters on the above list are female. Also, I've recently started playing Xenoblade Chronicles, so I may end up liking characters there too. (Shulk is cool so far.)

[shroudening]

10. Professor Layton

9. Edward (Radiant Dawn)

8. Sveta (Golden Sun: Dark Dawn)

7. Wes (Pokemon Colosseum)

6. Kratos Aurion (Tales of Symphonia)

5. Lex (Genealogy of the Holy War)

4. Sigurd (Genealogy of the Holy War)

3. Zephiel (Sword of Seals)

2. Regal Bryant (Tales of Symphonia)

1. Felix (Golden Sun)

Not much variety on this list... Oh well.