8 Video Games That RUINED Great Characters

And finally we have the textbook example of character assassination - Metroid: Other M, a game whose depiction of Samus Aran touches such a raw nerve that the fanbase has basically collectively agreed to memory-hole it.

Even accepting that Other M features a younger Samus, there's no excusing how disparate her characterisation is here from the battle-hardened warrior that made her a gaming icon in the first place.

Here Samus is immature, lacking in confidence, and too often reliant on the commands of men. And, perhaps most criminally, she even quivers at the sight of her arch-nemesis Ridley.

None of this felt like the Samus fans fell in love with, and while the intent was presumably to make her a more "nuanced" character, it ultimately felt like a massive regression that totally undermined everything she'd been up to that point.

Thankfully every subsequent Metroid game has quite sensibly ignored that Samus was ever depicted like this.