10 Video Game NPCs You Shouldn't Have Trusted

FromSoftware's recurring trickster character Patches is one who fans love to hate - a patently dishonest tosspot, a proto-version of whom first appeared in the studio's 2008 game Armored Core: For Answer, and has been regular fixture in their titles ever since.

Patches turned a lot of heads when he showed up in Demon's Souls the very next year as "Patches the Hyena."

Patches initially attempts to trap the player with the promise of treasure, later apologising for it and offering to sell you items, but then kicking you down a hole in an attempt to kill you.

He reappears as "Trusty Patches" in Dark Souls, "Unbreakable Patches" in Dark Souls III, and "Patches the Untethered" in the recent Elden Ring, each as tricksters who aid the player in one breath and attempt to sell them down the river in the next.

Patches also shows up in nightmare fuel spider-form in Bloodborne, where despite his more uniquely grotesque appearance is once again up to his usual chicanery - promising the player riches, only to set them up.

Despite this, Patches is such a charming scamp in the bleak and desolate worlds of FromSoftware's games that it's basically impossible not to like him at least a little bit.

Patches can't ever be trusted, but you'd miss him if FromSoftware ever retired him.