Move Over, Main Character: Ranking the Video Game NPCs Who Absolutely Stole the Whole Show
Photo by Photo by Michael Pointner on Unsplash on Unsplash
Let's be honest with ourselves for a second. Sometimes the hero is kind of a snooze. They've got the tragic backstory, the destiny-branded sword, the moody stare into the middle distance — and yet somehow the random blacksmith in town with three lines of dialogue is living rent-free in your brain six years later. That's not an accident. That's a writer somewhere in a cubicle going absolutely feral and nobody stopped them. We respect it.
This tier list celebrates the NPCs — merchants, quest-givers, innkeepers, cursed skeletons, whatever — who showed up, did too much, and accidentally became the most memorable part of their entire game. We're ranking them from S Tier (Certified Scene-Stealers) all the way down to C Tier (Good but the Protagonist Still Wins, Barely).
S Tier: They Didn't Come to Play, They Came to Carry
Ranni the Witch — Elden Ring
Technically Ranni is a major questline character, but she exists in this weird gray zone where the game is like "here's your main story" and you're like "that's cool but I'm going to spend 40 hours doing whatever this four-armed moon witch tells me." Ranni has more charisma, more lore, more presence than the Tarnished you're actually playing as. The Tarnished is a silent protagonist with no personality. Ranni has an entire philosophical manifesto and a haunted dollhouse. The debate was never close.
Beedle — The Legend of Zelda Series
Beedle is just a guy. A traveling merchant with a little pack on his back, an earnest disposition, and a deeply unhinged dedication to his shop. He shows up across multiple Zelda games, recognizes Link, gets genuinely excited to see you, and occasionally traps you in a cage when you leave without buying anything. That last part is insane and we love him for it. Link is out here saving Hyrule and Beedle is running a one-man retail operation with zero work-life balance. Iconic.
Merchant — Resident Evil 4
"What're ya buyin'?" Four words. Four words and this man became one of the most quoted characters in gaming history. He has no real backstory. He appears in a zombie apocalypse with no explanation, sells you rocket launchers with a wink, and occasionally says "Stranger" like he's auditioning for a Western. The remake gave him more screen time and fans lost their minds in the best way. He deserved it. He deserves everything.
A Tier: Stole Several Scenes, Didn't Even Try That Hard
Sigrun's Valkyrie Council — God of War (2018)
Kratos is a generational video game character, no notes. But the optional Valkyrie bosses, especially Sigrun as their queen, hit different because they carry this unspoken tragedy that the main story doesn't always pause to explore. You fight them, beat them, and then piece together that they were corrupted against their will. No cutscene explains it. The environmental storytelling does all the work. That's a level of craft that makes you wish the game had done more with them front and center.
Groose — The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Groose starts as a bully. A cartoonishly arrogant rival who exists to make Link look better by comparison. Then something weird happens: he gets a character arc. A real one. He goes from comic relief antagonist to genuinely helpful ally without it feeling forced, and by the end you're kind of rooting for him more than you are for Link, who remains, as always, a silent man in a green hat. The Groose fandom is small but extremely passionate and honestly? They're right.
Nastasha Romanenko — Metal Gear Solid
Codec calls in MGS are already legendary, but Nastasha specifically delivers some of the most thoughtful, politically dense commentary in the entire game — about nuclear proliferation, Cold War trauma, American military policy — while Snake is mostly just sneaking around in a box. She wrote a book after the events of the game. The woman had layers. Meanwhile Snake ate rations in an air duct.
B Tier: Memorable Enough That You Googled Their Names Later
Patches — FromSoftware Games (All of Them)
Patches appears in Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring. He kicks you into a pit almost every single time. He apologizes. You forgive him. He does it again. This is a relationship. It's parasocial and toxic and we keep coming back. Patches as a recurring character across completely unconnected universes is either a deep lore conspiracy or FromSoftware trolling us across a decade of releases. Either way, B Tier feels almost disrespectful, but his whole thing is being just trustworthy enough to keep you off guard.
Moira Burton — Resident Evil Revelations 2
Barry Burton's daughter is technically a co-protagonist, but she operates so much more like an NPC sidekick that she earns a spot here. Her entire personality is "I swear constantly and refuse to use a gun" and somehow that works. She's funnier than the game has any right to be, and in a series full of stoic action heroes, a character who's visibly done with everything is deeply refreshing.
C Tier: Good Support, The Protagonist Still Technically Wins This One
The Shopkeeper in Stardew Valley
Pierre is a perfectly fine NPC. He sells seeds. He has mild drama with his wife and a secret about his daughter. He closes his shop on Wednesdays for reasons that remain unclear. He is not going to blow your mind, but he's reliable, and sometimes that's what you need from your local produce vendor.
The Various Innkeepers in Skyrim
They know rumors. They sell beds. One of them will tell you about the Companions if you ask nicely. They are doing their best in a world full of dragons and they deserve acknowledgment, if not a spinoff game.
The Verdict: Give the NPCs Their Flowers
The wildest thing about this entire conversation is that game developers spend enormous resources building out protagonist backstories, motion-captured facial expressions, and sweeping narrative arcs — and then some guy types out forty words for a merchant character at 2am and accidentally creates a legend. The Merchant from RE4 probably has more fan art than most actual main characters from mid-tier releases. Beedle has a dedicated fandom. Patches has appeared in five games.
If there's a lesson here for game studios, it's this: the characters who feel real — who have a weird little personality, a specific voice, a memorable quirk — will outlast any amount of dramatic cutscenes. Give us the NPCs with opinions. Give us the shopkeepers with grudges. Give us the background characters who seem like they had a whole life before we showed up.
And honestly? Someone greenlight a Beedle game. We will absolutely buy it.
