7. Niko Bellic
Dont get me wrong, I love each and every player in the GTA franchise to date and up until GTA IV Id definitely have considered Tommy Vercetti from Vice City to be top of the pile. And even as I played GTA IV for the first time, Bellic didnt usurp him from top spot. In all honesty, I, like many out there, was initially put off by some of the elements in this new game at first, one of them being the massively hypocritical Niko Bellic. It was on my second more recent playthrough that I really started to see the subtext and change my mind. Niko is a man bred for killing, for combat. He escapes a life in war-torn Europe and comes to America to change his ways. But its obviously not that simple. Niko discovers that he never in fact escaped war, that in coming to Liberty City, hes simply entered into a different kind of war. And even though he constantly bemoans the nature of the land he now resides in, hes powerless to fight his own war-like nature. Maybe Niko isnt as badass as some of the other protagonists, but to me, he represents a certain purity of character; hes designed to tell a specific story, complete with subtext and all, not just to offer a fun gaming experience to the player (although that he does too). In that respect, Id have to say that Niko is probably one of, if not my favourite protagonist in the series.