Best video game characters – Your guide to the most influential figures in gaming history

For as long as they’ve had the means to, games have wanted to tell a story. Even in the early days of the original Baldur’s Gate and early Final Fantasy games, big releases relied on their game characters for people to connect with. This tradition is alive and well today. 

Assessing what could be the best video game characters feels like a vague and impossible task, but we’re doing it here today anyway. Looking at the wide swath of popular video game characters across gaming history, we’re running down just 10. There’s no ranking here, merely a celebration based upon their writing, their presentation, and just how much they bring to their games. Oh, and beware light spoilers.

✓ VideoGamer Summary

• Many things must come together to make an all-time great video game character, be that writing, performance, or importance to the story.
• The best kind of characters are the ones that you can’t imagine the game without, or at least don’t want to.
• You don’t necessarily need to directly control them to be affected by them.
• Video game characters that you play have a unique role compared to other media, as they have to work in tandem with their players.
• Just because you control a character doesn’t mean they’re only an extension of you; half the fun is in how they surprise you.

Commander Jane Shepard (Mass Effect)

So many RPGs make their protagonists a blank slate for players to project onto, but not so with Mass Effect’s Commander Shepard. Brought to life by a stellar performance from Jennifer Hale, Shepard is so much more than the sum of the player’s actions.

She is both an inspiring leader and loyal friend, unbowed by the inconveniences and challenges put before her. By the end of Mass Effect 3, a Paragon Shepard will have stopped no less than four genocides, and that’s before factoring in the eldritch threat of the Reapers. 

Her place as the ultimate sci-fi commander not only lets players explore the galaxy, but makes it a better place wherever she goes. She’s not just the kind of person we want protecting the galaxy; she’s the only type of person who can. 

Goro Akechi (Persona 5)

Goro Akechi is such a key component of Persona 5’s theme of rebellion against an unjust system. He acts as a rebel, victim, and perpetrator all at the same time, playing his own game, separate but utterly intertwined with the mission of the central protagonists. 

It isn’t really until Persona 5 Royal that we can appreciate him, as his whole storyline gets a shift of perspective. Being able to hang out with him really lets his personality shine, both the sides you love to hate and those you hate to love. 

The tragedy of Akechi is only added to by his voice acting, knowing when to turn on the charm and when to utterly let loose. His struggle is emblematic of what happens to people who are left to fall through the emotional and social cracks in our society, and what happens if you have to go through it alone.

Aerith Gainsborough (Final Fantasy 7 Remake)

The Aerith I’m really talking about here is her incarnation in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. While her polygonal original was memorable for all the right reasons, her new version is utterly mysterious. She absolutely knows more than she’s saying, and every time she lets something slip, it’s like a jolt of electricity..

Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth are full of moments that make you point at the screen when there are shake-ups to what is and what should be, and Aerith has been central to that since the beginning. Without her selling that mystery, this new series would not be as compelling as it is.

That’s not to say she is only an amazing character because of her narrative importance; she’s also charming, funny, and emotionally heartwrenching. Plus, she absolutely destroyed someone with a steel chair; you can’t not love her.

GLaDOS (Portal)

GLaDOS was already a memorable character by the time the first Portal wrapped up, an omniscient and omnipotent robotic entity here to force you to perform science until she decides it’s time for you to die. She was amazingly written, consistently funny, and a genuine menace.

When Portal 2 decided to depower her, we saw a completely different side, and that was dripping with utter heartbreak under her malicious comedy. Pulling back the curtain on her character to hint at, but never outright say, the tragedy of her story worked so well.

Her crescendo involves her being unable to bring herself to harm the protagonist, not after everything they’ve been through, and so she sends Chell off into the wider world. Her first song, ‘Still Alive’, was one of proud triumph, and her second, ‘Want You Gone’, is a bittersweet farewell, showing how much change a villain can go through after losing everything.

Zagreus (Hades)

Putting such heavy narrative emphasis into a roguelike, such as Hades, needs a strong character to carry it. Even with an ensemble cast, the protagonist has to be the voice that keeps a player going, even after the most calamitous failures.

Zagreus is such a perfect character for this. Despite being such a likable, kind person, he is driven with the same level of determined spite as any one-more-run kind of player. Re-emerging after death to trade snide blows with your father lets the player share in that petulance before setting out on another try to escape hell.

There’s a balance of genuineness and sarcastic wit that makes Zagreus so relatable. His low-key delivery also oozes such charm that you’re more than happy to have him as half of every conversation in a game with a lot of dialogue. 

Susie (Deltarune)

Toby Fox has created many memorable characters, but none of them can stand up to Susie. She started the game by threatening to bite your face off, but by the end of Chapter 4, she’s the only one I trust to give this game a happy ending. 

There are a lot of high-concept ideas that get thrown around in Deltarune, hinting towards something darker and feeding into a range of ongoing mysteries. Susie’s story centers around deciding who you are rather than letting anyone else define that for you, and not letting what ‘should be’ get in the way of what’s right. 

In a game where it feels like a lot of things are out of your control, and it’s not even clear if you’re the hero or the villain, it’s deeply reassuring to have a friend like Susie. She makes you glad to have someone watching out for you.

Kratos (God of War)

Taking an almost unredeemable vengeance-fuelled God of War and forcing him to confront the sins of his past is an inspired choice. Kratos’ journey is breathtaking to watch and firmly secures God of War’s place among the best PS5 games.

Every line between him and his son, Atreus, is dripping with subtext; you can feel him trying to be a good father despite his being tragically unable to process how to do that. He drags a Greek tragedy into the lands of other gods, and all you can do is push forward and hope against hope that he can somehow avert some terrible fate. 

It takes a lot to remake a character defined by his rage to be sympathetic, but it’s all in the nuance. He is burdened by his mistakes but tries to do better anyway, and that’s all any of us can do.

Ellie Williams (The Last of Us)

Ellie is a complicated and messy character, and brings an important lesson that just because someone is the protagonist doesn’t mean you have to agree with their actions. Across her two games, she is forced to undergo rapid change in a world that can only teach through harsh lessons.

In the first Last of Us game, she is an excellent companion, well-written, amazingly acted, and able to leave you both rooting for her moments of triumph and frightened for her in this messed-up world. She is rebellious and learning all the wrong lessons from her father figure.

As she grows, Ellie is wracked with trauma time and time again over her story, and even with the offer of a happy ending, she’d never take it. She is just part of one long cycle of vengeance and grief, and she embraces this with both hands.

Arthur Morgan (Red Dead Redemption 2)

Top-notch open-world game Red Dead Redemption 2’s portrayal of the end of the era of outlaws would never have landed the same way if we didn’t have Arthur Morgan. Rockstar Games’ deeply ambitious story needed a character that is more than just a heart; it needed someone alongside whom the player might rage at the dying of the light. 

For most of the game, Arthur and the player are one, stuck in a series of events over which they have little control; all you can do is keep going and hope the next steps are going to turn your luck around. Arthur feels like the perfect mouthpiece for a developer that so often parades ignoble criminals as its protagonists. Together, you and Arthur must look back and examine what it was all for. 

Harry DuBois (Disco Elysium)

Okay, the idea that there was no ranking was a lie, because Harry DuBois of Disco Elysium is the best video game character. The mystery of Harry is kept from both player and character, as you’re both forced to reckon with a deteriorating situation that neither of you knows anything about. 

For a character with no voice, the dialogue options you can choose speak volumes. Whatever past that has delivered Harry to you has twisted their psyche in such a way that you can be forced to say and enact out some truly unhinged decisions. 

It is a work of utter genius; both Harry and the player are forced to live with outcomes that one of you should have seen coming. Harry walks the line between malleable self-insert character and defined pre-existing icon. He walks the line so well and so expertly that we’re forced to wonder if we might ever reach the heights of Disco Elysium again. 

FAQs

Who is the greatest character in gaming?

It’s hard to make an object ruling out of best video game characters of all time, but for my money, it’s Harry DuBois from Disco Elysium. 

Who is the most powerful video game character ever?

That requires a whole discussion on the powerscaling of video game characters, but it’s likely between Bayonetta, Asura from Asura’s Wrath, and Kirby. 

Who is the most recognizable video game character of all time?

The most famous video game character is most likely Mario, but Pikachu or Sonic the Hedgehog could certainly be up there.

Who was the very first video game character?

The first video game character was Pac-Man, though it wasn’t until Donkey Kong that a game technically used characters for a story.