Captain Price from Call of Duty has been deemed the most attractive game character of all time in a weird study that ranks the attractiveness of 50 of the most iconic video game characters. In the last few years alone, gaming has seen some incredibly popular characters emerge onto the scene, from Red Dead Redemption 2 protagonist Arthur Morgan to The Witcher's Geralt of Rivia.
There has always been a debate over who is the most attractive video game character, whether it's a Super Mario Goomba or Tomb Raider's Lara Croft. As technology and the gaming scene has evolved, long gone are the days of the overly-exaggerated polygonal character models of old, as game characters have moved more into the realms of photorealism. In recent years, many developers have also turned to photo scanning and motion capture to incorporate more features from the actors portraying them, seen in hyper-realistic games like Hellblade, which has led to some Hollywood actors, including Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077, lending their facial likeness as well as their vocal talents to games.
A study from Top10Casinos has used a mathematical theory to rank popular video game characters, with Call of Duty's Captain Price tipped as the most attractive. The study took from GamesRadar's "Top 50 most iconic video game characters of all time" list and matched them against the Golden Ratio, an Ancient Greek theory that takes into account width and height dimensions of the face to determine what the Greeks believed to be the "perfect" structure, and therefore, the most attractive. Captain John Price has beaten out the likes of The Witcher's Geralt of Rivia and Assassin Creed: Odyssey's fan-favorite protagonist Kassandra for the top spot, scoring an 88.9% match to the Golden Ratio. The top 10 characters in the study did consist primarily of men, with Kassandra being the only female featured, as Rise of the Tomb Raider's take on Lara Croft just missed out, coming in 11th place with a score of 79.6%.
The study on most attractive video game characters - and CoD's Captain Price's appearance on the list - is interesting due to the focus on characters' faces. The release of current-gen consoles, Xbox Series X and PS5, has ushered in a new era of hardware capabilities, which means that games can now offer a level of photo-realism not previously available on older consoles. Epic Games recently unveiled eerily realistic character creator software, while Unity also recently shared a two-minute-long video called Enemies, showcasing how the game engine can process an equally-high level of facial detail. With both game engines being completely free to use, even beginners in the game development industry are able to build lifelike characters.
Top10Casino's list of most attractive video game characters might come as a surprise to fans, as Call of Duty's Captains aren't typically known for their good looks. With advances in technology allowing for more hyper-realistic games, future releases could pivot closer to dispelling beauty myths, offering game protagonists that are more relatable for players. It's rumored that 2023 will skip an annual Call of Duty release, which might mean the next title in the franchise could have the most realistic-looking protagonist yet.
Sources: Top10Casinos, GamesRadar