5 Video Game Characters Who Overcame The Biggest Odds – GameRant

If video games are great at anything, it’s putting characters in seemingly impossible situations and letting the player vicariously live through them as they face down the odds and try to emerge victorious. There’s no feeling quite like playing through a game where the deck is stacked against the player, yet they still try to succeed.

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Whether it be international crime families that control governments, eldritch monstrosities, or the very gods themselves, these are some of the best characters who faced impossible odds but still marched onwards.

5 Max Payne

Bring The World Crashing Down

• In Max Payne, he faced the mob and multinational drug corporations.
• In Max Payne 2, he faced a group of professional killers called the Cleaner Company.
• In Max Payne 3, he faced a multi-level state conspiracy between police, organ harvesters, and paramilitaries.

Max Payne never has it easy. Beginning with the very first game with his family being killed, Max has struggled to find any kind of peace in a world that seems determined to put roadblocks in his way. Through stylish gunplay, Max has faced down all manner of criminal conspiracy in the pursuit of some peace and quiet.

Despite being a fairly regular dude with a knack for gunplay, Max still manages to get back up again and face the extraordinary odds that face him. Usually up against institutional corruption or fearsome criminal gangs, Max always finds a way to persevere and survive, even if it comes at great personal cost. With a remake on the way, now’s the best time to get acquainted with Max’s adventures.

4 Isaac Clarke

An Engineer Against The Eldritch Abyss

• In Dead Space, Isaac had to somehow survive the necromorphs aboard the Ishimura.
• Then, in Dead Space 2, Isaac had to survive an even bigger infestation aboard The Sprawl.
• Then, in Dead Space 3, Isaac had to survive an even bigger infestation aboard a frozen planet, against a planet-sized monstrosity.

Being an engineer shouldn’t be this much trouble, but Isaac Clarke, the protagonist of the Dead Space games, keeps getting himself into all sorts of trouble whether he likes it or not. Completely untrained in anything to do with fighting, Isaac faces incredible odds when first faced with the necromorphs aboard the Ishimura, and uses little other than a litany of powerful engineering tools and sheer capacity to survive to persevere.

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As the franchise grew ever greater (and more bloated), Isaac’s odds of survival kept crumbling as the governments of this dystopian world began conspiring against him. Isaac had to fight off horrifying monsters, zealous cultists, and insanity, all while trying to just survive and maybe get back to some normalcy. His success on that front is spotty, but there’s no doubt Isaac overcame some incredible odds through the games.

3 Solid Snake

Nuclear War, Shadow Organizations, and Terminal Diseases? No Problem.

• In the Metal Gear games, Solid Snake single-handedly infiltrated top-secret PMC bases.
• In Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2, Snake was caught up in a complex conspiracy fighting off supernatural beings and nuclear holocausts.
• In Metal Gear Solid 4, Snake faced all of the above, as well as a bioweapon in his blood killing him off slowly, all while fighting the shadowy and omniscient Patriots.

Hideo Kojima games are well known for their complexity and deep lore which is hard enough for the player to keep up with, but poor Solid Snake actually has to live it. His life involved one clandestine mission after another facing world-threatening and supernatural forces hellbent on having philosophical conversations and dominating the world.

Through little else but his wits and skills, Snake somehow manages to fend off some of the greatest dangers the world has ever seen, even when his own biology starts fighting against him too. Anyone who has played the infamous “Microwave Corridor” sequence in Metal Gear Solid 4 knows just how desperate Snake’s odds of survival are, and how often he rises to meet them.

2 Commander Shepard

Fending Off The End Of The World, One Planet At A Time

• In Mass Effect, Shepard began his journey, only to realize the Reaper threat.
• In Mass Effect 2, Shepard beats death and joins a shadowy organization to try and beat back the apocalypse.
• In Mass Effect 3, Shepard manages to fend off a world-ending threat through sheer guts and perseverance.

Sometimes the future seems like a nice place to live, but for Commander Shepard, leader of the Normandy, the world of the future is rife with apocalyptic levels of threat at the hands of the wrath of the Reapers, a race of world-ending bio-mechanical aliens that are designed to factory reset the entire universe.

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Yet, firefight after firefight with a host of legendary weapons, Commander Shepard rises to the occasion and navigates the crime world, personal relationships, and intergalactic governments to find a way through to beat back the greatest threat the galaxy has ever faced, even if it costs him everything in the process. It’s hard to face much steeper odds than that.

1 Kratos

Bringing Down The Very Gods

• Throughout the original God of War games, Kratos becomes the toy of the Greek Olympiad and systematically murders as many of them as possible, culminating in the most powerful being in cosmology.
• Then, in the new God of War games, Kratos does nearly the same thing in the Norse world, slaughtering Norse gods who wronged him.

Some video game characters have to compete with the forces of the world, but few have had to face the odds of Kratos who challenged an entire olympiad of gods and actually beat them. Using little else but sheer fury at the wrongs done to him and brutal strength, Kratos carves his way through entire religions and mythologies to seek his revenge against the tyranny of the franchise’s many villains.

Though plenty of video game characters have struggled against the end of the world, fewer have sworn vengeance against not just a god, but all the gods, and managed to make good on their promise. Kratos kept ripping and tearing until he was through and somehow, he overcame the odds and survived.

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