Who do you consider the best protagonist in a video game?

[Nazulu]

Samus from Super Metroid. She is the most fun I had controlling a character in a single player game. Love grappling, wall jumping, bomb jumping, charging at high speed. She also looks awesome and all her weapons are convenient enough.

Unless you really mean who is written the best. Don't know.

 

[Pyrian]

Guybrush Threepwood. Because he's a pirate. And if you disagree, you fight like a cow.

 

[Fox12]

Depends on what you mean by "best." If you mean complex, then I'll go with good old James Sunderland.

Spoiler

Deep and Meaningful

But seriously, I love James, and I love SH2. It's a masterpiece, and James is one of the few truly complex characters in gaming.

Otherwise, I have a personal love for Cloud and Tifa and Joel and Ellie.

 

[FPLOON]

Rayman... Punching evil in the face with a smile on his face...

Other than that, You in South Park and the Stick of Truth?

 

[Rip Van Rabbit]

Captain Martin Walker from Spec Ops: The Line

Weird choice I know, but he was the most recent "protagonist" (Or he would call himself that, being a "hero" and all) to grab my full attention and not let go all the way through the harrowing experience that was his story.

To elaborate, watching and playing as someone slowly losing their grip on reality through an intoxicating haze of guilt, anguish and denial leads to some interesting insight into the mind of a hero-worshipping individual gone too far.

Now, without wishing to spoil, many believe that a certain unavoidable event to be the catalyst of Walker's downfall and I believe that to be correct to an extent. What I wish to draw attention to is the final talk that you recieve before you make your final decision for the ending...at that point you are treated to a complete reflection of Walker's actions and reminded of their consequences. Walker's delusions are revealed to be a core part of his character.

Even in-game Walker changes over time to reflect his mental instability. Walker's vocal inflections change from clear-cut orders to sadistic growls, execution moves change from swift attacks to cruel beatings. Even Walker's character model looks monstous and unrecognisable at the end.

...So a lot of that is speculation and it is ultimately left to the interpretation of the player. To me though, I felt pity and sorrow to see how horribly wrong an individual character's good intentions can be twisted and broken.

Not the "best", erm, protagonist, but certainly an interesting one.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I feel Joel from The Last Of Us is up there. Ellie got on my nerves sometimes. Joel however I couldn't get enough of. I'd love a prequel during some of the 20 years from the outbreak to the main game.

+1

While Joel isn't in the end that complex a character, he's quite unique in video games as an inversion of the gruff ex-military type we're used to seeing as a default protagonist. His actions aren't seen as noble, badass or even justified, but as an unpleasant way to survive. He doesn't like it, but he has no other options.

The end at the hospital is IMO a very effective use of interactive storytelling and conveying of character through gameplay: suddenly we step outside Joel, and he becomes separate from us. We may not want to do what he wants, but we have no choice, as we've been playing as him for 85% (percentage courtesy of MyAss.org) of the game. And just as the entire game has been about his slow rise from cynicism and brutality, he has to, and does quite easily, revert back to them for one last time. There we see that Joel can't change his past and what it made him. He can only try to control and keep a lid on it.

 

[Casual Shinji]

B.J. Blaskowicz, because he is made surprisingly relatable and engaging by a few scattered lines of dialogue, he makes the best of a very bad situation and he is capable of both violent rage and surprising gentleness when the situation requires it.

It's rather amazing how they made this meat headed, crew cut sporting, uber macho military dude into this facinating and loveable teddy bear.

While Joel isn't in the end that complex a character, he's quite unique in video games as an inversion of the gruff ex-military type we're used to seeing as a default protagonist. His actions aren't seen as noble, badass or even justified, but as an unpleasant way to survive. He doesn't like it, but he has no other options.

While that in itself isn't that unique to videogames, since violent men with a tragic past are a dime a dozen, Joel does manage to stick out from the rest. A lot of that is due to Troy Baker just knocking it the fuck out of the park with his performance, but there's also a nice bunch of little details to his character. For example, he never shows off or does a flourish during combat. Neither does he make quips when taking out enemies. This gives the impression of a man who is very proficient at killing, but who derives no enjoyment from it whatsoever.

The real kicker is at the end when we see that behind all that gruff, bearded manliness is just a lonely old man who has become completely delusional.

 

[Wisdom of the Falcon]

Manny Calavera, that's the end of that.

 

[Infernai]

Feel free to disagree, but I'm gonna say that Solid Snake is my favorite. Yeah, the games aren't perfect but I always did quite like Snake: He was a badass and a bit gruff, but not entirely heartless either. He had some more dimensions to him then just being a soldier and who could forget this lovely scene (Around the 1:35 mark. But hey, the whole thing's good):

Spoiler

And then David Hayters voice...god that's an awesome voice.

Anyway, short is I like Solid Snake. He's not as deep as some of the others listed here, but hey, the guy's far from unlikeable either.

 

[ArcadianDrew]

Not sure I even consider him the best, but Stocke from the JRPG Radiant Historia was a very good protagonist, I feel. He's one of the few set protagonists in gaming where everything he's said to his comrades or every important decision made with regards to the story I find myself thinking; 'Yeah, that makes sense' or 'Probably the best thing to do in the circumstances'. You can also fully understand why his party follows him on this dangerous mission and why he has their unwavering loyalty. In short, he's highly competent, which a lot of protagonists don't seem to be.

 

[Ishigami]

Title says it all. Of all the characters who have been main protagonists in video games over the years, which do you consider the best, and why?

The vessel.

Instead of naming a certain character I go by a certain type of character.
The vessel: Basically an empty shell to be filled by your own projections and actions in the game.

Examples:

Gordon Freeman: Half-Life
Blaze: Ace Combat 5 - The Unsung War
The Warden: Dragon Age Origins
Revan: Knights of the Old Republic
Corvo Attano: Dishonored

The vessel is, within limits, what you want it to be.

It doesn't have to be silent protagonist. Shepard of Mass Effect is a vessel just the same as Adam Jensen of DeusEx Human Revolution. It just needs to be possible to influence the characters behavior or attitude in some way or another.
Any MMO avatar is a vessel as well, for sandbox games anyway as for theme park MMOs maybe only in the social interactions between players.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Ezio Auditore.

It was a time when Ubisoft made good games. The very idea of following a character from his birth to his twilight years is interesting, and they've done a great job with Ezio. From a cocky rich kid to an old wise master Assassin. Ezio trilogy is simply amazing to me.

 

[Belaam]

Assorted MMO characters over the years.

Because I put many hours into figuring out who they were.

 

[ckam]

Walker from Spec Ops. Quite an interesting guy to be put into the role of protagonist.

 

[Ryallen]

Another interesting dilemma. The best protagonist. Hm...

My go to for this sort of thing would be Krieg, as he's my favorite, but that's mostly because I find him enjoyable and slightly tragic. He's my favorite, but I don't consider him to be the best, as the reason I love him so much is because of the things that he does for me, namely making me laugh with his various spouts of madness in between making the sky red with the blood of those unfortunate or stupid enough to cross his path.

The best, however, is a slightly more complex question. To me, the best protagonist is signified by not only who is established as their own character, but who also makes me understand that despite being the player character, they aren't invincible. That they aren't emotionally detached and need other people around in order to stay sane in this mad, mad world that they inhabit. In my quite limited experience with video games, the character that best fits into these parameters would have to be B.J. Blazkowitz from Wolfenstein: The New Order.

I hate characters who are given gruff or rough voices in a misguided attempt to make them sound badass. But it works for B.J. for one reason only: he isn't spouting stupid one-liners or threatening people or anything like that. A good portion of his dialogue consists of him talking about how tired of this whole affair he really is. How much he hates the war, how badly he wants the fight to be over, and how thoughtful he really is. One of the few characters in a hoo-ah action war game that was made thoughtful and softer, so to speak. (The above term wasn't saying that the game was hoo-ah and the protagonist was thoughtful. I meant to say that the action game was made thoughtful. Spec Ops used to be exactly the same as CoD until The Line came out. Look it up.)

 

[The Wykydtron]

I really like Raiden in MGS Rising: "this is actually a real word, look it up" Revengeance. He acts all heroic and stuff but he pretty much just goes "nah I like killing people and need very little reason for doing so" halfway through. This then unlocks Ripper Mode which is a fuckin' godsend on the higher difficulties cuz it stunlocks otherwise bullshit enemies (fucking robot gorilla bastards) and weakens their body parts to Blade Mode in one or two hits.

The amount of needless dramatics in his movements is great. The dual visor closing before every bossfight and the amount of times he spins his sword whenever possible speaks to the anime nerd inside me. Platinum Games are amazing at these types of games, Kojima was smart as fuck to get them to make a Metal Gear game.

As for best not coolest protagonist, I will go for the main character in Persona 4. Not the character of Yu Narukami created by ATLUS to make money on an anime + spin off games, the legit blank slate main character in the game. I strongly dislike Yu as a character in the anime, he was decent in the fighting games though.

His game version had enough set personality of his own to make the character work in the group of friends he's in while still allowing for player choice. Like how after a few life or death scenarios the super negative responses suddenly stop appearing (mostly, some S Links have them) whereas you have Dicklord McGee in Persona 3 "I don't care XDDDDDDDDD"'ing through the entire 60 hour game. Nice to see that my character is in line with how I feel, oh wait...

Seriously, as good as Persona 3, is the MC kills it for me. I look at Persona 3 and it's pretty much the beta version of Persona 4. Might be a good thing though? That's how sequels were supposed to work back in the PS2 era before things got a bit retarded in the industry today.