Summary
If video games are great at anything, it’s putting characters in seemingly impossible situations and letting the player vicariously live through them as they face down the odds and try to emerge victorious. There’s no feeling quite like playing through a game where the deck is stacked against the player, yet they still try to succeed.
Whether it be international crime families that control governments, eldritch monstrosities, or the very gods themselves, these are some of the best characters who faced impossible odds but still marched onwards.
5Max Payne
Bring The World Crashing Down
Max Payne never has it easy. Beginning with the very first game with his family being killed, Max has struggled to find any kind of peace in a world that seems determined to put roadblocks in his way. Through stylish gunplay, Max has faced down all manner of criminal conspiracy in the pursuit of some peace and quiet.
Despite being a fairly regular dude with a knack for gunplay, Max still manages to get back up again and face the extraordinary odds that face him. Usually up against institutional corruption or fearsome criminal gangs, Max always finds a way to persevere and survive, even if it comes at great personal cost.With a remake on the way, now’s the best time to get acquainted with Max’s adventures.
4Isaac Clarke
An Engineer Against The Eldritch Abyss
Being an engineer shouldn’t be this much trouble, but Isaac Clarke, the protagonist of theDead Spacegames, keeps getting himself into all sorts of trouble whether he likes it or not. Completely untrained in anything to do with fighting, Isaac faces incredible odds when first faced with the necromorphs aboard the Ishimura, and uses little other thana litany of powerful engineering toolsand sheer capacity to survive to persevere.
As the franchise grew ever greater (and more bloated), Isaac’s odds of survival kept crumbling as the governments of this dystopian world began conspiring against him. Isaac had to fight off horrifying monsters, zealous cultists, and insanity, all while trying to just survive and maybe get back to some normalcy. His success on that front is spotty, but there’s no doubt Isaac overcame some incredible odds through the games.
3Solid Snake
Nuclear War, Shadow Organizations, and Terminal Diseases? No Problem.
Hideo Kojima games are well known fortheir complexity and deep lorewhich is hard enough for the player to keep up with, but poor Solid Snake actually has to live it. His life involved one clandestine mission after another facing world-threatening and supernatural forces hellbent on having philosophical conversations and dominating the world.
Through little else but his wits and skills, Snake somehow manages to fend off some of the greatest dangers the world has ever seen, even when his own biology starts fighting against him too. Anyone who has played the infamous “Microwave Corridor” sequence inMetal Gear Solid 4knows just how desperate Snake’s odds of survival are, and how often he rises to meet them.
2Commander Shepard
Fending Off The End Of The World, One Planet At A Time
Sometimes the future seems like a nice place to live, but for Commander Shepard, leader of the Normandy, the world of the future is rife with apocalyptic levels of threat at the hands of the wrath of the Reapers, a race of world-ending bio-mechanical aliens that are designed to factory reset the entire universe.
Yet, firefight after firefightwith a host of legendary weapons, Commander Shepard rises to the occasion and navigates the crime world, personal relationships, and intergalactic governments to find a way through to beat back the greatest threat the galaxy has ever faced, even if it costs him everything in the process. It’s hard to face much steeper odds than that.
1Kratos
Bringing Down The Very Gods
Some video game characters have to compete with the forces of the world, but few have had to face the odds of Kratos who challenged an entire olympiad of gods and actually beat them. Using little else but sheer fury at the wrongs done to him and brutal strength, Kratos carves his way through entire religions and mythologies to seek his revenge againstthe tyranny of the franchise’s many villains.
Though plenty of video game characters have struggled against the end of the world, fewer have sworn vengeance against not just a god, but all the gods, and managed to make good on their promise. Kratos kept ripping and tearing until he was through and somehow, he overcame the odds and survived.
