Do we like them?

Do we like Gordon Freeman?

A character from Half-Life (1998)

Our score: 8 out of 10. Yes. He never speaks, but he keeps showing up when it matters and he's brave, stubborn and hard to stop. We'd follow the crowbar anywhere.

Gordon Freeman is a young MIT-trained physicist at the Black Mesa Research Facility, a remote desert complex. He's no soldier and had only basic safety training. His day at work starts as a routine experiment in the Anomalous Materials lab.

Things go badly wrong, and Gordon has to get out through a facility full of hostile creatures and military units. He picks up a crowbar and other weapons and works his way through the mess. He never says a word, so his character shows in what he does: he keeps going, solves problems and helps the people he meets.

Later in the series, Gordon is brought back into a world under occupation, and he becomes a symbol of the resistance. He fights alongside allies like Alyx Vance and Barney Calhoun. He does it with very little glory and a lot of crowbar. He loses points only for the huge body count and for his role in the original disaster, which was an accident.