10 Video Game Anti-Heroes We Can't Help But Love
Curmudgeonly heroes with hearts - and in one case, farts - of gold.
Even when he's shootin', lootin', and - most heinously of all - tootin', it's difficult not to have a soft spot (or a hard spot, depending on your predilections) for Red Dead Redemption 2's rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold Arthur Morgan.
Perhaps it's a form of digital Stockholm syndrome after spending Lord only knows how many dozens of hours on the prairies with the van der Linde posse, but either way we gradually grow not just to understand our outlaw avatar, but perhaps even love him. Or at least, like him an appropriate amount. We don't have to go down that DeviantArt route.
It raises a certain moral quandary: should we really empathise with a guy who has no real compunction when it comes to slaughtering ol' Western varmints just because, when he's riding into the sunset, he's not such a bad chappie afterall? Does familiarity breed, in this case, not contempt, but fondness?
Perhaps so - but Morgan isn't the first video game character to propose these difficult questions - questions we've chosen to ignore since Mario first squashed a poor Goomba flat. Heck, he isn't even the first in his own franchise.
It didn't matter how bad these guys got (and tellingly, they are all guys): we loved them anyway. Maybe that makes us bad people.
10. Jimmy Hopkins (Bully)
Bullworth Academy's Principal probably had full-blown cats, let alone kittens, when he discovered notorious rapscallion Jimmy Hopkins was transferring over.
The pimply pipsqueak arrived with a rap sheet worse than Holden Caulfield's, having been kicked out of schools all around the country for low test scores, truancy and giving oh-so many wedgies. But was he any worse than the rotters already under the Bullworth register? Sure, he's got some cheek on him, and doesn't shy away from a scrap, but he also works to unite his classmates' cliques against the real nasty bullies, like a Lilliputian Lawrence of Academia. We give him an A+.