[PyrosNine]

I like Boone, but who doesn't? A loner wandering a wasteland, discovers he actually had something truly horrific happen to him that started off his whole "silent and gruff" attitude and his being the most capable companion you get.

Ezio Auditore wins points for being a character that you literally follow from the womb to Old Age, and one who is both skilled and flawed, and yet an all around likeable badass.

Also, Colette from TOS, and most definitely Solid Snake! Both are people willing to give their all for saving the world, but we actually get to see what this means to the gory details! God Save the people saving the people!

Alyx, especially because she was designed to be: after long experiences of being completely alone, and doing incredibly superhuman and insanely difficult/awesome feats just to survive you finally get a companion who is justifiably a fangirl who appreciates how awesome YOU as Gordon Freeman are. The fact they made her an attractive dork helps her out as well too, and the fact she's coming onto the story secondhand compared to Kleiner, Barney and yourself. So while she knows how the dark future world works, the player still knows how to deal with this crazy one man against an alien apocalypse shit works.

I've seen cutscenes and several trailers occur in FF13, but I already felt a deep connection to the characters in that game: Just the knowledge that the people you're fighting for are doomed, you yourself are doomed to follow them, and there's this sense of hopelessness even though you're a badass super warrior riding an ice motorcycle made out of Twin Shiva's.

Persona 3's characters, but that may mostly be because of that one LP.