Characters may not always be the centerpiece of video games, but they always influence their games. A single character can ruin a gaming expe𓆉rience𒊎 through terrible mechanics, bad voice acting, and poor characterization.
Some of the most disappointing characters in games are those who defile previously brilliant characters. Whether those great characters are replaced or transformed into monstrosities, the loss of certain characters will always produce backlash in 💧the gaming community. Individuals who negatively change between games are particularly difficult to witness. Good characters should always be preserved, yet some makers violate characters through terrible origin stories and harmful character development.
The members of this list harm their games in multiple ways. Written poorly and designed with questionable intentions and mechanics, these characters represent the largest flaws in game design. Most are central parts of their games; 𝔉the exceptions have little screen time yet a huge impact, thus ruining their scenes and often worsening entire games. A fourth of the listed characters are primary protagonists, causing their game🌸s’ stories and gameplay to extensively suffer.
Any bad part of a game can be endured, but these characters are extremely difficult to tolerate. Whether players play through a whole game or quit early, these characters will often prevent players from ever touching the game again. Whether they disappoint players 𝐆throughout the game or in a single moment, these characters play pivotal roles in their games. In recognition of the greatest mistakes in the gaming world, here’s 25 characters who absolutely ruined their games.
25 Galen Marek (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed series) 🧸
As a largely emotionless protagonist who disrupts the canonical Star Wars timeline by murdering movie characters, Galen Marek (aka Starkiller) represents the greatest problems with The Force Unleashed games. Watching our favorite characters die is upsetting; watching them die in an alternate timeline is absolutely repulsive. The deviations from canon make The Force Unleashed and its protagonist difficult to relate to.
Starkiller may be a talented warrior who’s fun to control, but he’s uninteresting because of his unlimited power and consequent arrogance. His apathy and terseness work well for an evil video game protagonist though. Regardless of how you view Galen Marek’s character, at a certain point you’ll put down the controller so you can cease destroying everything you love about Star Wars.
24 Dust (Dust: An Elysian Tail) 𝄹 🦩
Dust is a pretty good game, but the same cannot be said for its voice acting. Only Fidget offers great lines and even she has her prob💃lems.
The character with the worst voice—and the most lines in the game—is Dust. With an unreasonable temper, a breathy voice, excessive angst, and an overbearing s🧸elf-identity crisis, Dust is extremely hard to listen to and almost impossible to empathize with.
While the other characters of the game are bearable, Dust will quickly tempt you into muting your device or skipping cutscenes. If you choose to endure his voice, you’ll spend almost as much time listening to him as coওntrolling him. Dust provides wonderful combat, but his story and horrendous voice acting interrupt the positive attributes of his game.
23 Madame Flurrie (Paper Mario: Theꦏ Thousand-Year Door)
Mario games have always been perfectly designed for all ages. Madame Flurrie is the blaring exception. With no clothes and large breasts that bounce whenever she moves, Flurrie vis♒ually scars her E-rated game.
Flurrie also provides an uninteresti🌞ng story. As one of the least complicated characters in the game, she purely obsesses🎐 over jewels and whatever she deems cute. Her first significant action is to kiss Mario against his will and she joins your party simply out of boredom and an attraction to Mario.
In combat, Flurrie benefits the battlefield with high HP and an amusing but disturbing move where Flurrie kisses enemies to steal their health. Despite her powerful attacks, Flurrie remains one of the most disliked and underused Paper Mario partners thanks to ꦿher inappropriate aesthetic and one-dimensional personality.
22 🐎 Royce ✃(Transistor)
With a simple, somewhat generic dystopian setting, Transistor maintains a mysterious and alluring world until Royce steps in. Royce’s voice screams “bad guy,” yet Royce actually contributes little to the apocalyptic events of Transistor. Instead of manipulating the Process to shape the world to his liking, Royce helps the player put an end to the Process. He only becomes the final boss by accident—an accident which makes absolutely no sense in the e🌠stablished rules of the game.
Royce could have been great, but the creators mistakenly made Royce an unintelligent hero instead of a manipulative antagonist. Instead of preservi𒁃ng the ga🍌me’s mystery, Royce causes confusion. Creating more questions than answers, Royce unnecessarily complicates the game and produces a disappointing ending.
21 Oswald The Lucky Rabbit (Epic Mickey 2: The Power 𒀰of Two)
While Mickey offers a fascinating and entertaining style of gameplay by creating and removing objects, Oswald contributes nothing new to the gaming world. He possesses only one attack and one solution to puzzles, whereas Mickey has two of each. Oswald is a wonderful NPC in Epic Mickey, ye💙t he makes a dissatisfying protagonist in the sequel. His complicated, jealous personality is replaced by a purely virtuous character, making him similar to Mickey and far less interesting than he was i🧔n the first game.
Oswald also embodies the worst mechanic of Epic Mickey 2: two players are required to play the game. Somebody must always play Oswald while another plays Mickey. Instead of allowing players to switch between characters, like the Lego games, Epic Mickey 2 prohi𒅌bits a single-𝓀player mode and forces Oswald upon players.
20 Leblanc (Final Fantasy X-2) 🎉
One of the largest sources of criticism for Final Fantasy X-2 is its female outfits. With little clothing and too much time spent talking about men, the three playable characters feel like they belong in fanfiction rather than a canonical sequel to Final Fantasy X.
Nonetheless, the trio’s outfits fit into a reality-based fashion—except maybe Rikku’s bikini. Leblanc, on the other hand, is absolutely ridiculous. No physics can explain how her loose V-robe remains attached to her body. As the primary antagonist of the game’s first chapter, Leblanc can easily dissuade people from playing Final Fantasy X-2. With an infuriating ego and obsession with Nooj (or, in her words, “Noojie-Woojie”), Leblanc exemplifies the silliness and patria🦩rchy which dominate the game.
19 Meta Knight (Super Smash Bros𓂃. Brawl)
If players master Meta Knight, they may make the character untouchable through a ridiculous move known as the Infinite Dimensional Cape. The Dimensional Cape was most likely intended to be a brief move in which Meta Knight teleports to a si🎃ngle location, but players with extreme skill and good timing can teleport Meta Knight forever.
Without any opportunity to hit Meta Knight, opposing players may never attain victory when battling Meta Knight. Entire battles are wasted thanks to Meta Knight’s overpowered, uninteresting move. While modern fighting games maintain balance by continuously modifying characters, no changes could be made to the copyrighted version of Super Smash Bros. Brawl.⭕ Meta Knight was banned from official competitive tournaments and he continues to be a nuisance in casual gaming.
18 𒉰 Ratonhnhaké:ton (Assassin's Creed III) ꦐ
The setting of colonial America in Assassin’s Creed III is underwhelming compared to Renaissance Italy; Ratonhnhaké💮:ton too falls short as a descendant of Ezio Auditore da Fiℱrenze. Ratonhnhaké:ton, aka Connor Kenway, suffers not only from less versatile weapons but also from confounding motivations.
Despite joining the Assassins out of the mistaken belief that Templars murdered his mother, Ratonhnhaké:ton continues supporting George Washington after discovering Washington destroyed his village. Ratonhnhaké:ton claims to desire freedom and an end to tyranny, yet he fights for a tyrant. Instead of enacting revenge for his village, Ratonhnhaké:ton murders his own people for opposing Washington rather than letting them choose who they want to support. The antagonists’ logiꦺc surprisingly makes more sense than Ratonhnhaké:ton’s, making him hard to watch and even harder to play.
17 ꧃ Baby Mario (Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island)
Baby Mario may initially seem cute, but he quickly becomes annoying. If he’s ever knocked off of Yoshi’s back, Baby Mario unleashes a horrendous crying noise until you recover him. If you are unable to keep Mario on your back, you’ll be tempted into muting the game—an action no player should ever have to consider, for Yoshi’s Island has an amazing soundtrack.
The crying obviously serves to remind players that Yoshi protects Baby Mario, but the story and gameplay already support the relationship between the two characters. Players don’t need further incentive to retrieve Baby Mario—if Nintendo wanted to show Mario crying, they should have made the baby visually but silently cry in order to 𓃲spare players’ eardrums.
16 ꧒ Preston Garvey (Fallout 4) 🤡
Bethesda often includes characters who constantly give repetitive quests. However, players usually follow particular conversation threads to acquire those quests. The quests are available if players want them, but they are easily avoidable. This is not the case for Preston Garvey. If you simpl꧅y approach Preston, he will automatically assign you quests to help settlements around the map. Having a single source for such quests is nice, but players should always have the option to choose those quests.
The most frustrating part abo🔴ut this mechanic is that Preston is a companion. Unlike other companions, Preston lacks very few lines outside of his quest-related jargon. Instead of writing an interesting story, Bethesda turned Preston into a post who repeats the same lines and never develops into a three-dimensional character.