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15 Video Game Protagonists We Love to Hate

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Rooting against our own hero.

Nazarii Verbitskiy

Gaming - August 8th 2026, 13:00 GMT+2

Aiden Pearce — 15. Aiden Pearce from Watch Dogs
Aiden Pearce hacks all of Chicago but somehow never manages to unlock a personality. He talks about protecting his family while leaving a trail of dead bodies and wrecked cars behind him, and the game never seems to notice the contradiction. That gravelly voice and permanent scowl were supposed to read as brooding anti-hero, but a lot of players just saw a guy who took himself way too seriously. Watch Dogs sold the fantasy of controlling a city, yet its own protagonist ended up being the least interesting thing about it. | © Ubisoft

Jason Brody — 14. Jason Brody from Far Cry 3
Jason Brody starts Far Cry 3 as a whiny rich kid on vacation and ends it as a tattooed killing machine who barely blinks at slaughtering an island's worth of pirates. The game never really addresses how fast he adapts to violence, which is part of why people still argue about him. Vaas gets all the praise for being the memorable villain, but Jason is the one who turns a survival story into a power fantasy without much self-awareness. His arc makes more sense as a critique of gamer bloodlust than as an actual character study. | © Ubisoft

Cole Phelps — 13. Cole Phelps from L.A. Noire
L.A. Noire hands Cole Phelps a badge and a hero's spotlight, then slowly lets you realize he might not deserve either. He climbs the ranks through ambition and a rigid moral code, but his personal life tells a much uglier story underneath the medals. Players spend the whole game reading faces for lies, yet Cole's own contradictions are the hardest to pin down. By the time his backstory fully unravels, rooting for him feels almost like a mistake you saw coming. | © Rockstar Games

Alex Mercer — 12. Alex Mercer from Prototype
Alex Mercer wakes up with no memory, a body count already behind him, and the ability to consume people and steal their shapes. Prototype never asks you to redeem him, because the guy was manipulative and cold even before he became a shapeshifting bioweapon. He tears through New York like a walking plague, and the game lets you enjoy every second of the destruction. There is no arc here, just a monster figuring out how monstrous he can actually be. | © Activision

Booker De Witt — 11. Booker DeWit from BioShock Infinite
Booker DeWitt shows up in Columbia looking like a standard gruff mercenary with a debt to pay off. Then BioShock Infinite starts peeling back who he actually is, and the guilt underneath gets uglier with every layer. He drags Elizabeth through a war zone while lying to her and himself about what he did to earn his ticket out. By the time the ending connects all the dots, Booker stops being a guy you root for and becomes a guy you understand, which is somehow worse. | © 2K Games

Deacon St John — 10. Deacon St. John from Days Gone
Deacon St. John talks a big game about freedom and brotherhood, but half his personality is just yelling at his dead best friend's memory. Days Gone dumps him into a zombie apocalypse and asks players to root for a guy who lies to almost everyone he loves, including his own wife. He's whiny in a genre full of stoic survivors, which somehow makes him more real and more annoying at the same time. People finished the game either defending him hard or wishing the horde had gotten to him first. | © Sony Interactive Entertainment

Ajay Ghale — 9. Ajay Ghale from Far Cry 4
Ajay Ghale shows up in Kyrat just to scatter his mother's ashes, then gets dragged into a civil war he never asked to join. Far Cry 4 keeps shoving him toward a choice between two equally messy rebel leaders, and he mostly just goes along with whoever spoke to him last. That passivity is the problem. Pagan Min ends up more compelling in his handful of scenes than Ajay is across the entire campaign. | © Ubisoft

Niko Bellic — 8. Niko Bellic from GTA IV

Niko Bellic came to Liberty City looking for a quiet life and spent the whole game proving that was never happening. He talks about leaving violence behind in almost every cutscene, then mows down a street full of cops twenty minutes later because a mission needed a body count. That gap between his words and his actions became the joke of GTA IV, with players mocking him for being the most self-aware killer in gaming. He hates what he does just enough to make you wonder why he keeps doing it so well. | © Rockstar Games

James Sunderland — 7. James Sunderland from Silent Hill 2
James Sunderland spends the whole game insisting he's just looking for his dead wife, and Silent Hill 2 slowly makes clear how much he's lying to himself. The monsters chasing him are not random nightmare fuel, they are shaped by his own guilt in ways that get uglier the more you understand them. Pyramid Head is not scary because he's a monster, he's scary because he's basically a punishment James built himself. Few protagonists have hidden something this rotten behind such a calm, sad voice. | © Konami

Abby Anderson — 6. Abby Anderson from The Last of Us Part II

Abby Anderson walked into The Last of Us Part II and killed the guy players spent the first game protecting. That single act made her radioactive before anyone learned a thing about her past or her reasons. The game spends hours trying to humanize her, giving her a crew, a conscience, and her own version of loss. None of that fully undoes the initial gut punch, which is exactly why she still splits people years later. | © Sony Interactive Entertainment

Gta Controversy 12 Trevor — 5. Trevor Philips from Grand Theft Auto V
Trevor Philips shows up in Grand Theft Auto V like a lit fuse walking on two legs. One second he's making you laugh with some unhinged rant, the next he's torturing a guy with pliers just to make a point about loyalty. GTA had given players plenty of violent leads before, but none who felt this genuinely unstable or this aware of their own chaos. Trevor works because Rockstar never asks you to excuse him, only to sit with him. | © Rockstar Games

Kratos — 4. Kratos from God of War
Kratos spends the original God of War trilogy killing his way through Greek mythology with a rage that never really cools down. He murders gods, allies, and pretty much anyone standing near him, all while flashing back to the family he accidentally slaughtered himself. That backstory is supposed to make him tragic, but honestly it mostly just explains why he's such a nightmare to be around. Later games try to soften him into a dad figure, and it works, but the guy who tore Helios' head off for a light source never fully leaves the building. | © Sony Interactive Entertainment

Joel Miller — 3. Joel Miller from The Last of Us
Joel Miller spends twenty years surviving the end of the world by shutting every feeling down except the ones that keep him breathing. Then Ellie cracks him open, and the game asks you to watch a broken man decide her life matters more than everyone else's chance at a cure. That hospital ending still splits people into two camps, those who understand and those who never forgive him. Joel never asks for absolution, which is exactly why the guilt sticks to you instead of him. | © Sony Interactive Entertainment

Ellie — 2. Ellie from The Last of Us
Ellie spends the first Last of Us proving she is more than cargo, then spends the sequel proving that trauma can curdle a good person into something uglier. Her jokes and curiosity made her easy to root for in 2013. By Part II she is lying to Dina, abandoning Jesse's baby news, and choosing revenge over the family she has left. The show ends with her alone in an empty house, and that isolation feels earned rather than tragic for its own sake. | © Sony Interactive Entertainment

Arthur Morgan — 1. Arthur Morgan from Red Dead Redemption 2
Arthur Morgan spends most of Red Dead Redemption 2 doing exactly what the Van der Linde gang needs, which usually means robbing, threatening, or beating someone half to death. He collects debts for a man who treats loyalty like a leash, and he rarely questions it until the story forces his hand. Watching him slowly realize how much damage he has caused, right as his body starts failing him, makes the whole thing land harder. He is a killer with a conscience that shows up decades too late to save him. | © Rockstar Games

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Not every protagonist is a likable hero. Sometimes the character we're forced to play is arrogant, cruel, or downright infuriating, and yet we can't help being drawn in anyway. Here are 15 video game protagonists we love to hate.

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Not every protagonist is a likable hero. Sometimes the character we're forced to play is arrogant, cruel, or downright infuriating, and yet we can't help being drawn in anyway. Here are 15 video game protagonists we love to hate.