In a few days the BAFTA Games Awards ceremony will take place, an opportunity to reward the best games of the year, but also the best characters.
THE BAFTA Games Awards (British Academy of Film and Television Arts), a ceremony during which many players in the video game industry are rewarded, are launched. If the event is less important than the Games Awards, it is still prestigious. Last year, for example, this allowed Elden Ring to obtain the prize for the best game not belonging to an existing license. The equivalent of GOTY had on the other hand been given to Vampire Survivors. In 2024, it is unsurprisingly Baldur’s Gate 3 which wreaks havoc and grabs almost all the nominations. However, to see if he wins them, we will have to wait for the start of the ceremony, on April 11. In the meantime, the BAFTAs have awarded a first prize, and it is the Tomb Raider license which is the lucky winner.
Tomb Raider wins a very nice prize
It is through a survey organized by the BAFTAs that Lara Croft has just been proclaimed: the most iconic character in video games. Nearly 4,000 fans took part in this vote and chose the adventurer, who first appeared in the game Tomb Raider in 1996. She ranks just ahead of Mario, the famous plumber, who had occupied 2nd place in 2023. In the survey press release, we also discover the thoughts of Shelley Blond, one of the first interpreters of Lara Croft, about her character. She tells : “When I played Lara in the original Tomb Raider, I had no idea it would be such a global phenomenon, neither Eidos nor Core Design. » She’s not the only one to have been surprised by this growing popularity.
The complete ranking of all the iconic video game characters according to the BAFTAs
Out of the multitude of video game characters, only 20 were included in this ranking produced by the BAFTAs, which we lets you discover here :
- Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)
- Mario (Super Mario)
- Agent 47 (Hitman)
- Sonic the Hedgehog
- Sackboy (Little Big Planet)
- Pac-Man (Pac-Man)
- Link (The Legend of Zelda)
- Spartan John-117 (Halo)
- Kratos (God of Wars)
- 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 (The Last of Us)
- Nathan Drake (Uncharted)
Lara Croft, a true icon of video games
Lara is now almost thirty years old, but the beautiful Englishwoman hasn’t aged a bit. A strong and courageous femme fatale with a strong character in her early days, then a tough student who stops at nothing since her reboot, the adventurer has always been a strong female icon. It must be said that before the 90s, most women had mainly a role as “damsels in distress” in most video games. It was, in broad terms, the “trend”. And if morals subsequently changed, with the arrival of many female heroines in the 90s and beyond, the debate concerning the place of women, and their representation, in the industry still exists. The representation of women is not always up to par, and even Lara, very sexualized at the time, did not escape it.
But it is also thanks to this that Lara was able to establish her popularity, by going beyond the boundaries of video games, by becoming a symbol, making the cover of a few magazines or appearing in advertisements. And although she has not always had the right to the best treatments, she remains a significant figure in the evolution of the industry, in a good direction. An icon adored by a lot of players but also female players. Since then, Lara has had many colleagues who are just as formidable as her, and that’s so much the better. But we’re not going to lie, the gunslinger isn’t about to have the spotlight stolen. It won’t be tomorrow that she will put down her double pistols.
Tomb Raider has not finished shining
Lara has more than ten games to her credit, a new Tomb Raider will arrive soon and we hope to discover it very quickly. The franchise will also be entitled to a large number of adaptations, in cinema, but also on paper with some comic strips in particular. An entire cinematographic universe with films and series will soon be dedicated to him, if things don’t change by then. On the video game side, we keep our fingers crossed that everything goes well too. If it is still the hands of Crystal Dynamics which take care of the games in the series, it is the giant Embracer which now owns the license and the titan of the industry has the unfortunate tendency to shed its recent acquisitions in recent years. time. But hey, we don’t worry that much, Lara will always find a way to get out of the grave, she already did it.