To celebrate the 20th BAFTA Games Awards, which will take place at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London next Thursday (April 11) and will be streamed live starting at 19.00 BST / 14.00 ET / 11.00 PT, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts announced that Lara Croft is the most iconic video game character ever made, according to a recent poll of theirs.
The votes of over 4K gamers elected Lara, who first appeared in 1996’s Tomb Raider before going on to star in many follow-ups, spin-offs, remasters, and even a few movies, ahead of Nintendo’s Mario. Surprisingly enough, IO Interactive’s Agent 47 from HITMAN secured third place. Intriguingly, the only franchise to feature two characters in the chart (Shadowheart and Astarion) is Baldur’s Gate 3, and that’s just from a single game launched less than a year ago. It’s a testament to the incredible job done by Larian writers with 2023’s Game of the Year, which makes it all the more sad that they won’t be continuing to work with the wonderful characters they’ve created.
Here’s the full list of the Top 20 most iconic video game characters ever made, as voted in the BAFTA poll:
- Lara Croft, Tomb Raider
- Mario, Super Mario
- Agent 47, Hitman
- Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic
- Sackboy, LittleBigPlanet
- Pac-Man, Pac-Man
- Link, The Legend of Zelda
- Master Chief, HALO
- Kratos, God of War
- Shadowheart, Baldur’s Gate 3
- Arthur Morgan, Red Dead Redemption 2
- Pikachu, Pokémon
- Steve, Minecraft
- Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid
- Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot
- Cloud Strife, Final Fantasy VII
- Astarion, Baldur’s Gate 3
- Kazuma Kiryu, Yakuza
- Ellie Williams, The Last of Us
- Nathan Drake, Uncharted
Original Lara Croft performer and voice actress Shelley Blond said in a statement:
I had no clue when voicing the original Tomb Raider game that it would be such a global phenomenon and neither did Eidos or Core Design. They had only ever done children’s games before and of course they hoped it would be a success, but I think it went above and beyond any and all expectations. When creating the voice for Lara Croft, it came just by looking at the rough sketches I had in front of me and I took note of the fact that she was a female Indiana Jones type of character, ballsy and well spoken. Lara is very special to me purely because she means so much to the gamers. I love hearing stories from people around the world who played the game and channelled Lara to escape their bullies or to help them feel stronger when they wanted to come out to their loved ones. And most beautiful of all is hearing how gamers used to play it with their parent/s who are no longer with us and the sound of my voice, the music from the game and sound effects are all wrapped up in their memories of that loved one. I’m honoured to play a part in that for them. I found out well into dating my husband that he had played Tomb Raider and used to enjoy hearing Lara Croft scream and say ‘No’. Now of course he has to put up with that on a daily basis.
Lara Croft is expected to be returning in the not-too-distant future. The next game in the franchise was announced two years ago to be in development with Epic’s Unreal Engine 5. We also know it will be published by Amazon, which reportedly plans to create a whole interconnected Tomb Raider universe that will span games, TV, and film. Rumors suggest the upcoming Tomb Raider game has been in the works for quite some time; we might see it at one of the upcoming Summer showcases.
By the way, we wanted to see whether you agreed or not with the results of the BAFTA poll, so we made one of our own. After all, Lara Croft is famously British, so there might be a bit of bias there.
Cast your vote below, and feel free to explain why in the comments section!
