In the Uncharted series, Nathan “Nate” Drake is treasure hunter with an everyman personality and a wardrobe to match. Game publisher Naughty Dog based him on a combination of Johnny Knoxville and Harrison Ford, and they got the scoundrel down pat.

Faith is the main character in the game Mirror’s Edge. The game is set in a futuristic dystopian society, in which a network of ‘Runners’, including Faith, are used as couriers to transmit messages while evading government surveillance. When she was young, her parents were killed while protesting government plans, forcing Faith to grow up on the street. She eventually meets Mercury, a Runner who recognizes Faith’s potential and becomes her mentor. He teaches Faith how to survive in the city, a world where obedience is brutally enforced and any deviance is relegated to the edge of society.

In the Portal games, Chell is essentially a lab rat for Aperture Science, performing tests under the supervision of the AI bot GLaDOS. It’s not long before Chell sees her chance to escape the testing facility using her portal gun.

In the Metal Gear Solid series, Solid Snake is special ops agent who infiltrates enemy installations and disrupts their operations. When he’s vastly outnumbered, he’ll do whatever it takes to remain stealthy, and isn’t above camping out in a cardboard box.

In this 2013 reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, Lara Croft is a young and ambitious archaeologist on a quest to find the lost kingdom of Yamatai. She’s added new skills to her repertoire, including stealthing, ziplining, and shooting a bow and arrows. She’s also looking more like a grungy survivalist than ever before.

In this adventure game, Fran Bow is a young girl struggling with mental disorder and an unfair destiny at an oppressive mental asylum. All this after she witnesses the gruesome murder of her parents and is left alone with her cat and only friend, Mr. Midnight.