Who is your most disliked Character?

So Resident Evil Code Veronica was recently released as a PS2 classic on the PS4 and I have been replaying it. As a die hard RE fan I rank Code V fairly low on the overall list of RE games, maybe 8th or 7th in a top ten list. But the most egregious thing about this game and why I rank it so low is because of one character. Let me introduce you to......

I am fairly certain that Steve Burnside is the WORST character in all of Resident Evil. He is incredibly annoying, sounds like Edward Furlong and depending on which version you play he will also look like a budget Leonardo DiCaprio from Titanic. Probably the worst thing about him is that he is a love interest for Claire and at one point tries to kiss her while she is sleeping. Also he tries desperately to look cool by duel wielding guns and has daddy issues. Now as a fan of Resident Evil I like some good bad voice acting, Barry's voice acting from the original RE is a beautiful thing to behold. However Steve's lines in Code V are so bad that they are absolutely terrible and detract from the overall game. Here is a sampling......

But yeah. I HATE Steve Burnside with a passion and I'm curious if you duder's have a most disliked character. A character so bad that it detracts from your enjoyment of a game. So who is your most disliked character?

He does sound like a very Canadian Eddie Furlong now that I watched that clip.

I think there are a lot of really annoying characters out there but I'm trying to think of some that ruin the experience. I mean Baby Mario is pretty bad in Yoshi's Island but he's supposed to be annoying, hearing him cry is a punishment for getting hit.

Navi also comes to mind but I was never really bothered by him/her/it.

Cookie Masterson came close to souring You Don't Know Jack for me, usually he's fine but I find certain bits especially grating like when he does the ventriloquist dummy thing.

Ashley from RE4 but that's more of annoyance with escort mechanics in general, not the character necessarily.

Oh I got it, the announcer from Drawn To Death.

Aiden Pearce. He is an awful person and literally the worst character in my opinion because I'm forced to play as him. He has no personality beyond "tough guy, gruff voice" and every "tragedy" in his life is entirely his fault and propelled by "How many girls in my life can I endanger?" I hated his motivations and playing as him. Watch Dogs was a perfectly salvageable game if he was taken out of the equation. But it was made worse by the decision to make Aiden the protagonist.

I've never wanted to finish a game faster just to see if the main character somehow redeems himself. Even Altair at least recognized how much of an asshole he was by the end of Assassin's Creed. Aiden was an ass to everyone that tried to help him and said literally the opposite of whatever I was thinking every time he was on screen. If he was just a secondary character or an optional character I wouldn't care, but he was the protagonist! You had to play as this humorless, soul-less edgelord and it made the entire experience so awful. I actually wished there was a sad or "depressing" end to this game that involved his death. Every person in that game had more personality and spirit than 10 Aidens combined.

If you make a game where players actively hate your protagonist, you fucked up. I'm glad that Ubisoft managed to make Marcus into a much more likable person, but I'll never personally know because Aiden was so awful I wrote off any future Watch Dogs games. I'll never know if Watch Dogs 2 or 3 are the best games ever made because the title "Watch Dogs" is forever tainted in my mind by their choice of "New IP Protagonist".

Probably Vaan from FFXII, love that game in general though

Comedy that falls flat is the worst for me. The Borderlands 2 characters, especially Handsome Jack, really got on my nerves. Then there was this other girl from Dragon Age Inquisition...

Squeenix just can't resist having obnoxious teenagers in a Final Fantasy game, even when they are wholly out of place and unnecessary to the plot. They. Can't. Resist.

Easy, Nathan Drake.

@redhotchilimist said:

Comedy that falls flat is the worst for me. The Borderlands 2 characters, especially Handsome Jack, really got on my nerves. Then there was this other girl from Dragon Age Inquisition...

Oh yeah Jack and Clap Trap where intolerable, and large parts where you had to hear both of them blabber on weren't skippable.

This asshole from FF Type-0.

Every single problem that occur was because of this fukkin whiny shit.

Makes every single character so far mentioned to be tolerable for me... maybe except for Steve Burnside (dumb ass name)

You're not wrong about Aiden being an awful character (especially given how hard they tried to push his "iconic" attire, as if anyone wants to emulate/honor him in real life). However, I'd contend he's not even the worst character in that game. I've tried to mostly block this out, so forgive me if my recall is a little hazy, but there was some hacker/deadmaus-esque character that was your foe in one of the missions. You had to "out-hack" him in various ways to discover his identity for what felt like forever while he taunted you with internet meme garbage like "u mad Aiden?", and it was fucking insufferable. It was literally the only time in that game that I really enjoyed roleplaying Aiden's "heroic" psychopathy, because running over that fucker with a car was beyond satisfying. I distinctly recall getting out of the car and just obliterating his carcass a la Inglorious Basterds.

Pandora from God of War 3:

Not because of the character (although she is pretty insufferable herself), but because her presence marks the point where the writing takes a nose-dive into really, really awful territory. In fact, I would single it out to Kratos in God of War 3, but he has the redeeming factor of being a pretty decent character in the previous games. However, everything in 3, specially involving Pandora, "hope" and Kratos' path to redemption is one of the worst characterizations I have seen in any media.

Hm... if we're talking support characters, definitely Liam from Mass Effect: Andromeda.

If we're talking main character, that's a toughie. The one that instantly springs to mind is the lead from the most recent Bionic Commando game from Grin Studios, but picking him seems like going for low hanging fruit. Maybe Lance Vance from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. He was a putz as a supporting character in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and utterly awful in his own stand-alone title. Remember Nico's ludo-narrative dissonance? "Oh, I'm so sick of murder and killing. I want a new life. *murders indiscriminately*" Imagine that ramped up to 11. Yes, Vance... I get it, you hate being an errand boy and doing all these stupid slaughter-fests. But, we both know you're going to keep doing them. Just go with it.

Hope. This guy stands out as the worst character in a game known for having terrible characters. Everything about him is bad, his design is terrible, his backstory and motivations are stupid, he spends most of the game crying, his arc is forced and weird, and he is a liability in combat.

Also, his name is hope.

@johntunoku: Woah... I almost forgot about him. Thanks for that reminder.

Between him, Vaan and Penelo, I am pretty sure someone in Square Enix writers team has some really obnoxious son he insist on portraying, or has no idea how to write young kids without making them punchable.

He's unBEARable.....

@johntunoku said:

Hope. This guy stands out as the worst character in a game known for having terrible characters. Everything about him is bad, his design is terrible, his backstory and motivations are stupid, he spends most of the game crying, his arc is forced and weird, and he is a liability in combat.

Also, his name is hope.

^with you 1000%. hope is THE WORST.

Zidane, Cloud, That Gunblade Idiot whose chracter is so badly written I don't even remember his name or what he was about desprite watching a LP of the game a week ago, Tidus and all these other whiny baby FF characters basically. All of those are garbage-bin main characters and not worth everybodies time.

The only "whiny" FF character I don't give a fuck what he does is Vivi. His character arc was OK and proof enough that hes more of a man than any of these dumb pansies combined. Not to mention hes overcoming his existential crisis in a much mature way than that other chracter.

Lots of characters in this thread that are terrible, but Handsome Jack is the only one that made me mute a game so that I didn't have to listen to him. I found him completely unbearable and finding out that he was in the Pre-Sequel made me instantly disinterested in that game.

Tidus from final fantasy, fuck that guy and his stupid shorts.

Oh, I've got a few.

• Michael's son in GTA 5 (probably number 1)
• Michael in GTA 5
• Riaden in MGS2 and MGS4
• Adam Jensen from Deus Ex and his stupid fucking batman voice (I know, I know)
• Practically the entire cast of Fallout 4 besides Nick Valentine and Hancock

@meierthered said:

@redhotchilimist said:

Comedy that falls flat is the worst for me. The Borderlands 2 characters, especially Handsome Jack, really got on my nerves. Then there was this other girl from Dragon Age Inquisition...

Oh yeah Jack and Clap Trap where intolerable, and large parts where you had to hear both of them blabber on weren't skippable.

I am reminded of this:

Without a single doubt in my mind, Rebecca and Shaun from the Assassin's Creed games. They're both just so insufferable, but in completely different ways. The thing that makes them the worst is their sub-TV level writing and characterization, both are barely 1 dimension. These two honestly soured me on the entire franchise.

Pretty much every character in Borderlands. That game's humor just doesn't do it for me. Fuck Claptrap.

Although after reading the first reply to this thread, Cookie Masterson comes real close. Almost makes Jackbox unBEARable sometimes (fuck Teddie).

Oh, and also I hate everyone and everything in the Borderlands universe. I can't pick a single character though, so Karol from Vesperia still takes it.

Yep, I knew this thread would be mostly bashing of young men with fragile emotional states. This is why western games are full of toxic masculinity.

Bo Rai Cho from the Mortal Kombat series he farts and pukes dumb shit.

Everyone in GTA 4 and 5 (especially 5). There isn't a single redeeming thing about any of them. How and why people think those games have good writing is something I'll never understand.

IMO, most good characters have a certain type of earnestness that I really appreciate. GTA has absolutely no soul in this regard. It just... aggressively shoves its 14-year-old's ideas of discourse and philosophy in your face, while trying to use the excuse of "satire".

P.S. I do not blame the writers for this, but their style of writing invites some of the worst multiplayer crowds in gaming I've had the misfortune of playing with. Just the fucking bottom of the barrel lowlife scumbags and assholes.

@nightcrawlah: What's your pick, then?

@stonyman65 said:

• Riaden in MGS2 and MGS4

I see what you're saying, but let me raise you one.

As opposed to the apparently non-toxic e-masculinity in smugly belittling an entire region and anyone who dares to not share similar character preferences?

Rose wins that. Thing about Raiden is, he gets a redeemable time of it in MGS4. He is put through the ringer as much as Snake and comes out alive, intact and with his family back. And gets another game. Rose, in contrast, goes from being not even there, to turning up in the closing credits as if she was there .... to marrying Campbell in 4 to bring Raiden into the plot or something.

Well, I wouldn't blame anyone for forgetting about Killzone, but I seem to remember everyone hating Rico.

@redhotchilimist: I think of Raiden and Rose as a package deal. Their presence in MGS2 is the most irritating writing in pretty much the whole series.

Raiden is just poorly written and hard to relate to and his overall backstory is silly. It's really hard to believe he was a child soldier because he really doesn't seem noticeably affected by it when all it did was make him not decorate his room. His overall confidence/competence is kinda questionable, given the amount of child soldier time and VR training he has done. As for character design, while Snake's unkempt haircut is a little silly for a soldier, Raiden's carefully permed whatever-the-fuck Final Fantasy haircut is even sillier for a professional soldier. As for Rose, it's completely ridiculous that she would keep bringing up all of their personal problems over the radio on a mission where Raiden's life and the President's life are literally constantly in danger.

MGS writing certainly has ups and downs, but at least with something like The Boss and original Snake, I think it's pretty easy to buy that Snake has a lot of respect and admiration for The Boss. Every late game emotional argument Raiden and Rose have feels like unearned bullshit because they're both shallow, uninteresting characters that I didn't care about at all.

@notnert427: It's not so much about preference but rather the really shitty way in which these kinds of characters are talked about. Words like "pussy" and "pansy", that they should "man up". Maybe it's because I personally relate to these characters more than say Geralt or Nathan Drake that it strikes a nerve in me.

And yes, I used hyberole in my original comment. I apologise.

Fair enough, and I appreciate the response. Some of that stuff is kinda shitty, and there arguably are too many dudebro protagonists. However, other people may relate to the Geralts and Nathan Drakes or enjoy roleplaying the archetypal hero more than a meek character. I think there's a place for both.

There are a lot you could do here, one that I had been thinking about recently was Minsc. I just see so many people lovingly reference the character or use the avatar of it and man I couldn't stand that for one second in BG II. It's not funny at all.

Raiden also sucks, as do most of the character unique to 2. I love what MGS2 was doing as a story overall but it didn't need such bad characters, such poor bosses, and such a boring environment to do it. Those parts of the game are just bad. Vamp is real lame, Fat Man sucks. You can go on.

Otacon in MGS4 is pretty unbearable throughout.

Tidus is bad but don't let Wakka slip by unnoticed.

One for me I was thinking about recently as well was Jack Kelso. I was looking back at LA Noire and getting mad again at how dumb it is when you switch over to him and in a game with interesting flawed characters he's this uncorruptable superhero vigilante and it's really dumb and a bummer they did that with him.

@nightcrawlah: EDIT: I saw your response about this but you are pretty off base given what I see in this thread. People don't just hate vulnerable characters, it's all about being obnoxious or unfunny for the most part.

@johntunoku said:

Hope. This guy stands out as the worst character in a game known for having terrible characters. Everything about him is bad, his design is terrible, his backstory and motivations are stupid, he spends most of the game crying, his arc is forced and weird, and he is a liability in combat.

Also, his name is hope.

Hey, Hope. Mother's Day is coming up.

Oh, wait... "Mom's are tough," right?

I'm gonna go with Claptrap. I don't care about your "banter", Claptrap! Shut the fuck up! I hate you!

Except this statement is not true at all.

Hope is bad enough that I've only played the first few chapters of FFXIII, and I still won't argue in his defense. I'm fine with him having emotional issues, but he just seems like he's busy being either useless or passive aggressive towards Snow.

I love claptrap does that make me a bad person

Not at all! We should probably watch comedies separately, and that's about it. I can't stand the Borderlands 2 humor, but tooons of people love it. I don't mind Karol, who afabs515 mentioned hating, it's all just a matter of taste.

Definitely Nathan Drake.

I'll mention the one that 99.9% of people will disagree with me on, which is totally cool: John Marston.

You don't have to like a protagonist -- that's not a rule of writing -- and it's probably good that I don't like John all the time. So I will rate this choice as N/A because it's intentional for him to be an anti-hero with some more emphasis on the 'anti.' I really fell in love with RDR when you got to Tall Trees, and I made my peace with Mr. Marston in those stunning last hours. Still, some of his rambling got my goat.

Pritchard in Human Revolution is incredibly annoying, but you kind of come to a mutual respect on a certain mission, and Pritchard is openly concerned for Adam's safety, so that feels wrong to put in full-blooded, but he is just an unfunny douche for 85% of that game

Daxter gets on my tits.

The Director in Manhunt is perfectly written to be detested beyond measure, intentionally.

100% dislike, though? Fucking Issun from Okami. Stunning game; mind-numbing character. I have never wanted to mash through dialogue so quickly.

Honorable mentions: Luke from the Layton games, and all the creeper helpers in Viva Pinata.

@brunothethird: Oh God, Issun... I think I had blocked him from my memory. *shudder* No!

FUCK

YOSHI

@nightcrawlah: I understand what you're saying but honestly Shinji Ikari is one of my favorite characters. There is definitely a right and wrong way to do that kind of character and it's incredibly grating when pulled off poorly.

Clap Trap is truly awful. Without prior Borderlands experience, I played Tales of the Borderlands recently and I ended up with him in my squad (should have done some research, I guess) -- holy shit, this clown almost tainted the whole thing for me. Thank god the rest of the cast was stellar enough to balance him out. Jesus Christ.

Kratos is easily the worst video game character ever made. Such an unlikable asshole

Nathan Drake isn't far behind. He's just super generic and boring.

I just popped in to say I disagree with most of this threads answers, especially clap trap. One of the funniest parts of the Borderlands series. And handsome Jack, too.

Yeah, as someone who doesn't really like Borderlands too much, Claptrap is easily the best written character of them all for me.

One character I dislike heavily is Trevor from GTAV. I get that he's insane and random and over the top, but fuck i just don't enjoy him at all.