So, now I bet you’re wondering who can top Lee, the first and greatest of the bunch. Well, this is still my list, and while Lee’s death affected me as much as it did everyone else’s, there was still someone that got a bigger reaction out of me than he did.
Ladies and Gentlemen, my number one pick is…
#1: Asher Forrester (Game of Thrones)
That’s right. Asher Forrester is without a doubt, my favorite Telltale Games protagonist. Not for his playability, but for his personality:
Asher is the second born son of the Forrester family. A rebellious youth, he spent his early years brawling in bars, sleeping with prostitutes and generally being the bane of his father’s sanity. When he was seventeen, he fell in love with Gwyn Whitehill, the eldest daughter of the Whitehill family, his father’s most bitter rival. With war on the line, Lord Forrester made the choice to exile Asher across the Narrow Sea. Now, several years later, Asher lives as a mercenary alongside fellow mercenary Beshka the Basilisk, harboring dreams of someday returning home. Dreams that are answered when his uncle Malcolm returns to recruit him for the upcoming fight.
First off, Asher’s choices in personality are incredibly funny to pick. The man’s a comedian and a charmer wrapped up in one. In his first establishing moment, his choices range from being funny, to being threatening to just being charming. He then backs this up with incredible skill, being one of the only characters of Game of Thrones who can take on people that outnumber him and escape victorious. And not only that, but his relationships are wonderful to watch, especially his partnership with Beshka. Between the two of them, they provide the most light-hearted moments of the game, and manage to be a shining light in an otherwise dreary, cynical and depressing game. Even when things take a turn for the sinister with a dive into Beshka’s backstory, you still get behind Asher as he helps his friend through a difficult point in her life, and every choice he makes in the resulting conflict shows his loyalty and dedication to the people he loves.
All this amounts to the main reason that I believe he deserves to be number one on this list: Clem was a character that I grew up watching develop, but I only got to play as her for a bit of that maturity. Lee was an amazing character, but is most remembered for his death, which is unavoidable. Asher has the optionof being killed, and for the life of me, I can’t go through with it.
Asher undergoes a long, hard journey to get military reinforcements for his family – a family that treated him like crap – because they are being threatened by outside forces. Upon landing, he is ambushed alongside his older brother, also a player character, and the player is forced to choose which brother escapes while the other holds the enemy off. I can never convince myself to sacrifice Asher, and I still haven’t to this day. Simply because I like him that much, I’m willing to forego an entire section of an alternate story just so I don’t have to see him go. He’s charming. He’s badass. He’s suave. And anyone that can make me care enough about them to downright refuse to let them get hurt in a work of fiction is definitely worthy of being number one on a list like this.
Iron from Ice, Asher Forrester. You’re the best of the best.
Thank you for your time.