Videogame characters we really care about

Dec 14, 2007

95% of videogame characters are little more than background noise. They talk, blink, maybe wave their arms around a bit while yelling at you about 'keys', 'objectives' and 'friendly fire'. But sometimes you run into characters that stand out like explosions in the night sky against the cardboard cut-outs that inhabit the majority of games. These are the characters you actually care about.

Now we're not likely to confess our feelings for a polygonal personality to random people on the street, because being treated like a fudge-brained simpleton is an experience best avoided. Nor would we launch into a similar dialogue with our significant others. We've already hadenough of'that look' and aren't happy with being dumped because talk too muchabout fictitiouscharacters created by geeks in XXL black t-shirts.

In some cases we even feel awkward admitting our feelings to ourselves. But we're all friends here, right? And you'll nod in understanding as we run though the characters we really care about, without searching for a quick exit or calling us 'weird' or punching our faces, right? Right? Then let's begin...

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.