Character select screens have been (and in some cases, still are) a bit of a minefield. You could browse the roster and inevitably land on a character whose entire identity was more stereotype than nuance. It was lazy.
But we have seen some beautiful moments of writing where Black characters were afforded complexities, actual baggage, messy histories, relatable stressors, labyrinthine relationships, and plenty of reasons to stand out in our memories for years to come.
Carl “CJ” Johnson
Think back to 2004 when Rockstar dropped us into a fictionalized California and told us to manage…well…everything. CJ worked because Young Maylay gave him a tired, relatable voice, and Rockstar put him completely at the mercy of whatever chaotic whim the player had that afternoon.
The game threw a massive amount of variety at us – including the sprawling Las Venturas strip where you could casually step off the sidewalk to try your luck at virtual roulette wheels or digital slot machines. It essentially served as a massive, offline blueprint for the sheer variety and interactive entertainment found in online casino games today, which were just finding their feet in the broader gaming industry back in 2004.
Johnson became an immortal meme because he wasn’t just the inexhaustible, ever-energised protagonist a lot of video games feature. He was someone a lot of us could relate to on some level.
Lee Everett
Telltale Games made a business model out of making us feel like absolute garbage for making split-second decisions, and Lee was the emotional anchor of that misery. You start the game in the back of a police cruiser and within twenty minutes, the world ends and survival is the name of the game.
There is an incredible weight to how Lee’s story unfolds. It is a long, exhausting slog through the crushing reality that nobody is coming to save him.
Most games want you to feel invincible, but Lee just felt like a tired guy trying to do the decent thing before his time ran out. That final hotel room scene still hits like a brick to the chest.
Jax
It doesn’t get much more classic than Jackson “Jax” Briggs, a guy who looked at a tournament filled with thunder gods, soul-stealing sorcerers, undead ninjas, and four-armed monsters and decided his best asset was just throwing hands. He started out in the early nineties as a relatively normal special forces operative wearing a purple tank top (which was apparently standard military issue back then) before the franchise decided he needed a serious upgrade. What you end up with by Mortal Kombat 3 is a man who had his arms replaced with solid bionic steel.
Jax stuck around because he brought a much-needed level of blue-collar pragmatism to a universe that was too obsessed with ancient prophecies and interdimensional politics.
Alyx Vance
Half-Life 2 came out over two decades ago but Alyx still holds up as a masterclass in how to write a companion character who doesn’t make you want to throw your monitor out the window. Valve skipped the fabled damsel-in-distress tropes of the early 2000s, choosing instead to write an actual friend who had real edge (and comedic timing).
Valve gave her a personality that felt lived-in. When a character can make a grey, dystopian landscape feel worth saving just by being a reliable ally, you know the writers actually put the work in.
Sgt. Avery Johnson
Sometimes you don’t need deep, agonizing existential dread to make a character memorable; sometimes you just need a guy who knows exactly how to yell at aliens.
The Halo trilogy is filled with complex sci-fi lore about ancient rings and galactic extinction, but Johnson kept the entire universe grounded with classic military movie swagger.
It is ridiculous, over-the-top, and entirely necessary to break up the monotony of shooting purple elite aliens in sterile metallic corridors. His lines became legendary because they carried the energy of an old-school action movie VHS tape you found in your uncle’s basement.
