Lara Croft Is the Most Iconic Video Game Character Ever Made, According to a BAFTA Poll

To celebrate the 20th BAFTA Games Awards, which will take place at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London next Thursday (April 11) and will be streamed live starting at 19.00 BST / 14.00 ET / 11.00 PT, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts announced that Lara Croft is the most iconic video game character ever made, according to a recent poll of theirs.

The votes of over 4K gamers elected Lara, who first appeared in 1996's Tomb Raider before going on to star in many follow-ups, spin-offs, remasters, and even a few movies, ahead of Nintendo's Mario. Surprisingly enough, IO Interactive's Agent 47 from HITMAN secured third place. Intriguingly, the only franchise to feature two characters in the chart (Shadowheart and Astarion) is Baldur's Gate 3, and that's just from a single game launched less than a year ago. It's a testament to the incredible job done by Larian writers with 2023's Game of the Year, which makes it all the more sad that they won't be continuing to work with the wonderful characters they've created.

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Here's the full list of the Top 20 most iconic video game characters ever made, as voted in the BAFTA poll:

• Lara Croft, Tomb Raider
• Mario, Super Mario
• Agent 47, Hitman
• Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic
• Sackboy, LittleBigPlanet
• Pac-Man, Pac-Man
• Link, The Legend of Zelda
• Master Chief, HALO
• Kratos, God of War
• 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 Williams, The Last of Us
• Nathan Drake, Uncharted

Original Lara Croft performer and voice actress Shelley Blond said in a statement:

I had no clue when voicing the original Tomb Raider game that it would be such a global phenomenon and neither did Eidos or Core Design. They had only ever done