TheRealLastDance:
scary corperation?....lol...you mean an old moron in a building....i didnt see anything scary there...just a bitch who liked being screwd up the ass. Give me a break.

Desmond miles is easily the WORST protagonist ever. I didnt even want him to survive...

Stalin's Soviet Russia? You mean a fat guy with a mustache and a uniform. No chance of getting shot or shipped off to a gulag there.

Personally I recall Cloud having a fairly decent amount of development, granted it has been years since I last played FFVII, thus do not hold me to that. What irritated me know end about FFVII is how horrendously bad the beginning portion of the game's story is. Until you reach I believe the city is called Kalm (Cloud tells everyone about Sephiroth) that game decides to piss all over itself, spit on its characters and just to be smart, everything is tedious. Example?

Cloud at the beginning is a badass and essentially burshes of everyone as a "I'm a lone wolf mercenary, bugger the hell off with your problems." Now this is interesting given you know he has to eventually soften up otherwise no one would help him. However in less then twenty bloody minutes Aeris is kidnapped (a person Cloud was already an asshole to once) and suddenly he throws away his Lone Wolf status, puts on his Mario custom and is off to save a girl he met five seconds ago, leaving his cool apathetic badassery behind to cry in a corner.

Another part is Jesse and co being killed. This was suppose to be a build to show how Shinra would do anything regardless of who suffered. Problem was the writers forgot you only knew this characters for again five bloody seconds and they were annoying for each one of those seconds. Hell when they died I was generally pleased after I asked myself for the sixth time "Who the fuck is Jesse?"

So no I would not give Cloud this award, it isn't his fault the writing staff had no idea how to write a decent beginning. At least the rest of the game was fairly good and no it is not the best game ever.

On topic, I agree with the Link vote. Every game is the same tired recycled plot: "Princess Zelda is in trouble Link, save her!" He never has any character development, hell he does not even have a personality to develop. It's like playing with a Robot... in white tights... and a green tunic... who travels through time... or on a boat that hates him (I'm looking at you DS Link!)

To be fair Mario also hits all the Link points as well.

ET. Fuck ET!

Link was made (and named) specifically to be a link between the player and the game, as nuetral and faceless as possible so he couldn't get between the player and the game. He was never supposed to ever speak originally, but they couldn't keep that up in the long run. He's the first in a long line of faceless voiceless heroes.

At least he doesn't have a helmet.

Timeshift guy wins!

Fire Deamon:
On second thought, you're right... ET wins.

Every single person in Bully. I rented it, played it for an hour, went do do something else, and when I came back I realized how much I hated every single character.

Shu from Blue Dragon. All the way. What a tit.

What's-his-face from EDF.

stompy:
Theoretically, if you're talking about protagonists that don't have any back story, you could mention Jack from Bioshock

I didn't know he had a name, but assuming you've played it you must have fallen asleep at the best bit if you think he's got no back story. That was pretty much the most important part of the plot, his back story.

And shit me was it amazing when that was revealed. Where's that "emotional moments" thread...?

whoever said Leon shall be Muted them selfs
Leon twas awesome and you know it!

"Leon it was awesome"?

You fail at grammar.

Prince Alexander from Kings Quest 6. As much as I love that game I allways thought Alexander was such a sissy.

Left paddle in pong. Fails as a protagonist - no back story no compelling reason to want to continue to ricochet those balls- definitely a flat protagonist.

Terminalchaos:
Left paddle in pong. Fails as a protagonist - no back story no compelling reason to want to continue to ricochet those balls- definitely a flat protagonist.

This. His acting was so... two-dimensional

(User was put on probation)
ahaha you suck at life!

KidSampson:

stompy:
Theoretically, if you're talking about protagonists that don't have any back story, you could mention Jack from Bioshock

I didn't know he had a name, but assuming you've played it you must have fallen asleep at the best bit if you think he's got no back story. That was pretty much the most important part of the plot, his back story.

And shit me was it amazing when that was revealed. Where's that "emotional moments" thread...?

he had backstory, it was just explained later on in the game. I do, however, nominate him becasue the whole time playing that game I couldn't shake the feeling it was a glorified fetch quest and a bit of a XIII knock off (man has amnesia, man has flashbacks, man shoots everything but that's as far as it goes)

Leon P:
(User was put on probation)
ahaha you suck at life!

What the fuck.

I really hated Shu from Blue Dragon, him and his stupid "I won't give up!" Line that he just won't stop saying...

For me it went like this...

Shu: I Won't Give Up!
Me: Goddamn, there's no context for that statement, your just saying it because it sound determined and meaningful but theres no REASON WHY it's determined or meaningful, it sounds like you just tacked it on to make him more "main charactery"

I also hated Vaan from FFXII, I was WAAAAYYY more interested in Ashe, Basche, Balthier and Fran and I'm stuck playing this little bitch? Goddamn.

Though the worst character ever, in any game...

Is Johnny "Irritating worthless mother fucker" Garland from Shadow Hearts: From the New World. They replaced Yuri, the most awesome RPG lead EVER with this little fucker? He's an annoying amnesiatic fucktard, why should I care about him? Oh wait, there's no story, so it doesn't matter.

Theoretically, if you're talking about protagonists that don't have any back story, you could mention Jack from Bioshock

I didn't know he had a name, but assuming you've played it you must have fallen asleep at the best bit if you think he's got no back story. That was pretty much the most important part of the plot, his back story.

And shit me was it amazing when that was revealed. Where's that "emotional moments" thread...?

he had backstory, it was just explained later on in the game. I do, however, nominate him becasue the whole time playing that game I couldn't shake the feeling it was a glorified fetch quest and a bit of a XIII knock off (man has amnesia, man has flashbacks, man shoots everything but that's as far as it goes)

Don't get me started on the amnesia thing, if you were to discount ever game where the lead character has amnesia that'd be about half of gaming's back catalogue. But I'd just point out that BioShock is the sort-of-sequel to system shock 2, which was the proper sequel to system shock, which pretty much started the whole "main character has amnesia" trend, so I'm prepared to forgive it. And system shock was pre-XIII, although wasn't XIII based on a comic book or something? And was that before or after system shock? Either way I don't think XIII was their main point of reference.

More importantly, when the back story is explained, not only is it awesome but also is probably the best and most interesting explanation for his amnesia I've ever seen, not to mention the best explanation for the main character following the instructions of some dude he's never met.

mechsword42:
Here's an easy one: Raiden from MGS2. Possibly one of the worst protagonists ever.

He wasn't that bad, although he was kind of a pussy, but he wasn't too bad, and he gets his redemption in MGS4.

The reason amnesa is such a cliché is that it's the perfect 'blank slate' on which to craft your own ideas of the character. So many of these characters (like the silent protagonist) are clichés because the idea works. The one's we tend to hate are where they try something different which fails (like Squall or Cloud depending on your opinion).

I'm going to defend Tidus, yeah he's an annoying brat with daddy issues, but he's an annoying brat with daddy issues who becomes less annoying and grows up considerably throughout the game.

EDIT: Cloud was one of the first amnesiatic characters, so I'll be fair to him. The Guardian Force Amnesia in Final Fantasy 8 was the stupidest thing ever.

Okay firstly Master Cheif, and all the other stereotypical FPS generated "super badasses" can all go die in a hole, squall was a whiny emo bitch and deserves to suffer for it, Link has no character development same as samus aran and are both horrible characters, but no one even mentioned the kingdom hearts I version of sora, the faceless light warriors, or my personal favorite the naruto games and all there inbred children of stupidity.

Good characters are ones such as DMC3's Dante, Garnet and Freya from FFIX, Riku from kingdom hearts, and then there are the supporting characters in the half life series which you actually give a shit about (eli vance, alyx, barney, ect.), sephiroth and vincent valentine(not the dige of cerberus verrsion), zero and bass from the megaman series, then one of my favorites Gaz from COD4, most of the characters i have listed have actual realism in there characters and don't have an epiphany and change all at once it is a gradual process that makes them seem like actual people, the develiopment in these characters is well written thats why the other's i listed suck

PedroSteckecilo:
Cloud was one of the first amnesiatic characters, so I'll be fair to him.

With FF7 weighing in at a full 4 years after system shock, I'd go as far as to say that's not true.

Squall made me dislike FF8 so much I actually didn't want to finish the game. That and the fact that for some Godforsaken reason, it was as boring as anything to play. I never quite managed to put my finger on what it was. Maybe it was just that Squall was such an utter dick.

"I've got some candy, Squall! Would you like some?"
"..."
"Oh no! A lost little puppy!"
"..."
"Oh no, Squall! Everyone ever has died apart from us!"
"..."

WHAT'S FUCKING WRONG WITH YOU!?

He probably got better but I couldn't give a shit.

Any RPG game where the main character NEVER TALKS - his personality is exposed through other characters and to be honest, that's almost laziness on the designer's part :P

qbert4ever:
Bubsy the bobcat.

Top that one.

I have one

Ace the Acrobat.

I like Link. understandably it's hard to 'connect' with him as a person, but you're meant to be him, not be interested by his story.

Whatsisface from Prey. Starts off mooning over the object of his affection, which isn't so bad. Then he tells his awesome grandfather to go f*** himself and *beats two men to death with a wrench* while love interest begs him to stop for (and this is probably a disconnect between the animators and the script writer) making some dirty comments to her from the other side of the bar. Not five minutes later he's berating said love interest for praying too loudly as they're about to be fed to an ornate alien sausage-making machine. I don't see you coming up with any better ideas, arse-head.

Prey has one of the most honest-to-God interesting opening sequences I've ever seen in an FPS, and if it didn't all kick off around such an enormous cock of a main character I'd probably have been completely blown away by it. As things stand when the dude got capped by some alien grunts running along the walls I found I didn't care enough to start from the last save point or go through the "nice idea, WTF execution" rebirth ritual and promptly quit out and uninstalled the game.

I actually like Master Chief, at least in the first Halo game. He's a straightforward soldier. He's not quirky. He's not rebellious. He takes his orders without 'witty' comment and Gets Shit Done. I approve wholeheartedly.

-Nick

Gahars:

qbert4ever:
Bubsy the bobcat.

Top that one.

I have one

Ace the Acrobat.

it was Aero The Acrobat.

Decoy Doctorpus:

CartoonHead:
Nero? Who is Nero?

Guy from Devil May Cry 4. Imagine Dante but... even doucheier.

Quoth Yahtzee "Nero is a pussy, Whereas Dante is more of a cunt"

TheGreenManalishi:
I like Link. understandably it's hard to 'connect' with him as a person, but you're meant to be him, not be interested by his story.

Thank you! I honestly don't give a shit about charecter development if the games are good.

laikenf:

Gahars:

qbert4ever:
Bubsy the bobcat.

Top that one.

I have one

Ace the Acrobat.

it was Aero The Acrobat.

I have one that tops 'em all; Ya ready? ...AWESOME POSSUM! HA!

whatshisface from turok.

Any corporate mascot character from anything in the 80's or 90's.

While I don't like the Japanese pretty boy trope, some do, so I can't say they're the worst.

Xan from Baldur's Gate. Does listening to the NPC whine every time he's clicked on sound fun?

Grandfather from Prey. You'd have a tough time finding a bigger walking cliche or more stereotyped character. The 'Injun's' in 40's westerns had more depth.

Shaq from Shaq-Fu.

shatnershaman:
Arbiter! Ruined Halo 2.

Worst non Halo protagonist

Toad "The princess is in another castle!" Fuck you Toad.

I liked the arbiter. he has a cool back story and is the one of the only really developed Halo characters

PedroSteckecilo:
I really hated Shu from Blue Dragon, him and his stupid "I won't give up!" Line that he just won't stop saying...

For me it went like this...

Shu: I Won't Give Up!
Me: Goddamn, there's no context for that statement, your just saying it because it sound determined and meaningful but theres no REASON WHY it's determined or meaningful, it sounds like you just tacked it on to make him more "main charactery"

I was going to say him, but you did a great job of summing up exactly why, so I'll just quote it. Bear in mind also that I've only played it for about three hours so far, which is testament to how irritating it is in just the handful of times I've heard it so far. God knows how I'm going to play it through without going mental.

Vaan from FF12 was particularly horrible, as was Tidus from FF10. I sort of consider them to be the same person for various reasons. Sticking with the Final Fantasy thing, Yuna was absolutely unbearable in FFX-2 (or FF: Barbie Edition, as I've taken to calling it). That game would've been a complete waste of time if it wasn't for the fact that I honestly believe that including Rikku could save even the worst game ever.

I must admit that I don't often find myself interested enough in characters outside of Final Fantasy games to notice their good and bad points, so other references are likely to be few and far between. I wanted to slap Nero for every second of the hour that I played DMC4 before vowing to never go near it again. Raiden never really bothered me, he's not great but far from insufferable.

I'm not particularly trying to defend him but I should probably say that I liked Squall for exactly the reason most of you dislike him... he reminds me a lot of myself at that age.

You mean Turok? That was his name you know. or do you mean Slade, cranial drill intrusion victim? (missed reply button)