Elements of game design: Character

I personally feel that characters in games are clearly high on the list of priorities of what is important to a good game, I believe good game mechanics are most definitely top of this list but character design and personalities are a very close second, some of my favourite characters from video-games include, Garrus Vakarian from the Mass Effect series, Glados from the Portal series and Sander Cohen from Bioshock.
I find these characters stand out for me because they have interesting writing or backstory, I believe good writing for a character is crucial for games that don't revolve solely around shooting peoples faces. Character writing and backgrounds are especially important in games like Mass Effect because of the games nature, where you are actively encouraged to interact with other characters within the world to progress and enrich the experience. Whereas in Portal Glados serves as a passive antagonist in the way she goads and taunts you while you progress through the game, this side-line approach of villain interaction is fairly rare in games and was a unique part of portal that was highly praised upon its release.
Sander Cohen from Bioshock is one of my favourites purely because he's eccentric to the point of madness, as the player you always feel on edge around him as you cant quite be sure what he's going to do next.

A few examples of bad characters in video-games in my opinion include most first person shooter game characters as they are usually very two dimensional and have poor cliche writing or no writing at all most of the time, a good example of this point is the new Aliens: Colonial Marines game, the marine characters in that game are so poorly written and just downright annoying at times that you couldn't care less when they get torn in half, and I love the Alien universe and its mythos. In the case of characters like Halo's Master Chief this actually works to the characters favor because it adds to his characters portrayal of being inhuman and heartless, but in most cases it usually doesn't work in that way, some people would argue that the reason characters in shooter games have fairly average or bad writing is that its not key to games overall experience, which in a way is true and a decent point but I still believe that it would further enhance the experience if the writing was good.

An example of this are the Films of Quintin Tarantino, or more specifically Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction because these films feature Gangster style characters and criminals but the writing is brilliant, Samuel L Jackson's character, Jules from Pulp Fiction in particular is especially well written, It pretty much launched his career as an actor. If you haven't seen these films you wont get my point but do yourself a favor and watch them because they are great movies.