9 Best British Video Game Characters
Lara Croft
You were all expecting it, so we might as well get her out of the way first. Of course Lara Croft is going to be on this list, she’s one of the most recognisable characters in video game history and probably the most famous British one.
She’s the star of one of the most popular video game franchises of all time, gets to visit all sorts of exotic places searching for treasure, and she looks great to boot - she was portrayed in two film adaptations by Angelina Jolie after all. Lara has had her fair share of controversy over the years, largely due to her visual design, but fans keep coming back to her games which are generally pretty fun to play.
What’s more is that, strange PR statements aside, the upcoming 2013 reboot of the series looks to be quite the thriller, so all is looking peachy for the attractive, London-born daughter of a wealthy Lord. Who would’ve thought it?
Wheatley - Portal 2
Okay, so a loose Personality Construct can’t really have a nationality, but that broad West country accent brought to the character by comedian Stephen Merchant is undeniably British.
Poor old Wheatley, originally built as an ‘Intelligence Dampening Sphere’, his sole purpose when attached to GLaDOS was to render her less dangerous by bombarding her with a stream of inane thoughts and ideas. You’ve got to feel for the guy.
Having become detached from the evil robotic overlord of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center, he becomes your guide for the first half of the game so that you can help him escape the facility. His incessant babbling and incompetence is instantly endearing, and most of that is down to the superb writing displayed in Portal 2, which shows up again and again in different characters throughout the game.
Even later in the game when he briefly becomes the antagonist, you can’t bring yourself to hate him. Watching him despair over the failure of his cube/turret hybrid designed to solve test chambers on their own was one of the highlights of an already fantastic game.
Captain Price - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Series
The modern military shooter might be going stale, but Captain John Price was right there when the revolution happened with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and he’s still there today in the third iteration.
His first words to you playing as Soap MacTavish are to insult your ridiculous nickname and to question your abilities as a soldier, and you know straight away that although harsh, this is a man to respect. He proves himself a worthy soldier and commander throughout that first game, and the moment at the end where your squad lies decimated on the bridge and he slides a pistol over to you is cinematic genius.
Even a Russian gulag can’t bring Price down. After you inadvertently bust him out in the second game he immediately joins you in your globetrotting terrorist murdering spree – I would have wanted a shower and a hot meal first.
Price shows his loyalty in the third game pursuing Makarov, the man responsible for the death of his now long time friend Soap, who he proceeds to beat up and leave hanging from a makeshift noose. And what does he do in the moments after this dark and horrific episode? He whips out a fat cigar, lights it and sits there smoking while sirens wail in the distance.