They might be entrenched in popular culture these days, but can you remember the first time you came across the likes of Nathan Drake's fun-loving carefree persona, or kebab-legged Marcus Fenix's first foray into slaughtering a few city blocks-worth of Locust? Of course what our loveable characters go on to do in their subsequent games helped to shape them immensely, but who managed to essentially sprout a fanbase straight from the ether as soon as they appeared on our screens? We're not just talking heroes here either, or villains - everybody's up for grabs through the archives of gaming's past. However we're only going for first appearances throughout entire canons, so sadly Garrus Vakarian's Archangel reveal in Mass Effect 2 doesn't qualify, and as for Solid Snake or Link's respective debuts? Well they're nothing more than a few lines of text from way back on the 1987 and 1986 NES originals. All that being said, it could be any cutscene, those first few minutes where we're in control, meeting an antagonist for the first time, or just being in the company of the character in question; the overarching feeling always remains the same; "Man, this guy (or gal) is awesome."
21. Agent Morgan (Deadly Premonition)
One for the quirkier gamer, and those who can look past some godawful game design in favour of hilariously over-the-top characters and bucket-loads of "so-bad-it's-good" animations. Swery's Deadly Premonition is a title that harkens back to the days when we didn't all care about frame-rates and what games look like with rain-effects coating everything, instead starring a cavalcade of characters spawned from the mind of creative director Hidetaka Suehiro that end up taking a smattering of Western influences and putting them through his own unique blender; the end product of which starts with Agent Morgan barreling down some nondescript cliffside road. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qltjIXLx5Cw As he continues to drive - following a minuscule tutorial section of sorts - we see Morgan on his phone breaking down the intricacies of an "inter-dependant relationship" between two people, where one of them "does horrible nasty things" to another called Tom; and it then turns out he's describing the Tom and Jerry cartoon. Deadly Premonition remains one of the strangest entertainment properties ever created, but its utterly unique bonkers-blend of Twin Peaks-surrealism and real-world referencing is always funnelled brilliantly through Agent Francis York Morgan.
