Old Soldier / Video Games

• Deconstructed in Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown. Mihaly is in his seventies, yet he's still flying fighter craft for Erusea. However, as noted by Dr. Schroeder, flying fighter craft takes a toll on his body, as he comes back from each sortie exhausted from the fatigue. Late in the game, Mihaly is given a flight suit that wasn't tested, and it does nothing to improve his flying abilities. After that, Schroeder has a flight suit made based on his specifications, and it allows Mihaly to fly the way he wants. However, after Mihaly's third and final dogfight against Trigger, the ending reveals that he survived getting shot down, but his body was unable to handle the stress anymore, and it left Mihaly bedridden for the remainder of his life, which Mihaly considered a Fate Worse than Death.
• BattleTech, in addition to several existing examples from tabletop canon like Natasha Kerensky or Morgan Kell^note although he's still relatively young at the point in canon when the game takes place, has Sir Raju "Mastiff" Montgomery. He doesn't get much chance to shine in-game, only appearing during the tutorial mission, but he's a top-notch mechwarrior who personally trained Lady Kamea and her cousin Victoria and has over forty years of experience.
• Carter in Deus Ex.
• In Diablo III the male barbarian was meant to be the same Barbarian Hero from the second game in the series, albeit 20 years older and sporting a gray beard.
• Dragon Age:
  • Sten from Dragon Age: Origins acts like this, although you never get a grasp of how old he actually is (digging in character files with the official developer's toolkit lists him as merely 30, making him actually an aversion of this trope — not that you'd ever guess that from looking at him).
  • A more straightforward example is Teryn Loghain, who on top of being an exemplary general (if a terrible politician) puts up a serious fight against your chosen champion in his Duel Boss Trial by Combat and can even join your party as a Gray Warden in time for the final battle. Depending on past choices, Loghain can show up in Dragon Age: Inquisition as a Grey Warden and fighting despite the fact that he's likely in his late-50s at the very least.
• Dynasty Warriors:
  • Most of Huang Zhong's lines invoke his experience and age; the source material Romance of the Three Kingdoms suggests that he was 63 when he first appeared in the story to fight Guan Yu. Although he is actually a year younger than Jia Xu. However, Jia Xu appears much earlier in the story and as such is depicted as being much younger looking.
  • Huang Gai (no relation) of the kingdom of Wu also merits a mention, being cast as a muscular old marine (that is, a shipborne warrior, as befitting his kingdom's naval tradition) in particular, and ever since Dynasty Warriors 6 he's portrayed with gray or white hair. Also true to most of his Three Kingdoms characterization.
• Echoes: Operation Stranglehold: Colonel Strickman, 65, is both a capable fighter and the leader of one of the largest guerrilla cells fighting against the Hybrid Pantheon.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The ancient Chimeri/Dunmeri Founder of the Kingdom Lord Nerevar was (at least) in his 300s at the time of his death and still serving as a Frontline General. Granted, the races of Mer are Long-Lived compared to the races of Men, but that is still quite old for a Mer. (Not counting those who've enhanced their lifespans with magic or divine powers.)
  • Frandar Hunding, the legendary Redguard/Yokudan hero Master Swordsman, was around 60 when he led the Ansei to victory against Emperor Hira and then traveled to Tamriel. He would have pushing 90 when he fell in battle against the giant goblins of Hammerfell.
• The Regretful Soldier from Fallen London fits quite well. He's always drunk and frequently weeping, but he's still one of the best brawlers there are.
• Fallout: New Vegas has the members of the Enclave who can rally for one last fight at Hoover Dam, should you complete Arcade Gannon's quest and convince them to fight with you.
• In Far Cry 2, Josip is 48-years-old and a heavy drinker, but still described as a man "who will break you in two."
• Final Fantasy:
  • Despite otherwise being an irreverent old coot, Galuf of Final Fantasy V gets very serious whenever it comes to Big Bad Exdeath. Turns out he was one of the four Dawn Warriors who fought Exdeath thirty years ago and has been ruling Bal in a thoroughly warrior-king way ever since. When Galuf dies in battle against Exdeath — a battle he fought with zero HP — his last words to the party aren't sentiment, but telling them in no uncertain terms to finish the job while they beg him not to die. He does have more caring words for his granddaughter, though.
  • Auron from Final Fantasy X is an unusually young example, being only around 35, but considering his role in the group, that the rest of the party is in their teens to early 20s, and that Auron was a longtime warrior monk before he became a guardian, (and then the only guardian to ever survive a successful Pilgrimage, which is enough to make him a Living Legend by itself) and his general Seen It All attitude, Auron being considered the old soldier is more than justified.
• Fire Emblem has many older soldiers fighting alongside their younger peers in the battlefield. Unsurprisingly, they are usually the Crutch Character who starts off with more experience in a fight (with base stats higher than their younger soldiers) but their low growths make them very difficult to catch up once the younger soldiers gain more stats. This include Jagen, Lorenz, Mycen, Xavier, Marcus, Douglas, Duessel, Tauroneo, and Gunter.
• Fur Fighters: Roofus Hound fits the bill. He has since retired along with the rest of his squad but this WWII veteran is still out kicking ass with the best of them when Viggo pops up.
• Halo:
  • Sgt. Avery Johnson is at least almost 70-years-old in the main trilogy, and has survived about half-a-century's worth of constant frontline combat fighting Insurrectionists, Covenant, and Flood. The fact that he's a Spartan-I probably explains at least part of it.
  • On that note, all of the Spartan-II Super Soldiers are about 41 by the time Halo: Reach occurs, and they've all been fighting since they were 14. Nevertheless, their augmentations, along with plenty of cryo-sleep, help keep them physically younger than their ages suggest.
  • Edward Buck fills this role in both Halo 3: ODST, where he's 42, and Halo 5: Guardians, where he's 48.
• Jolee in Knights of the Old Republic acts like this sometimes.
• William "Bill" Overbeck from Left 4 Dead, a former Green Beret and two-tour Vietnam vet who is the oldest of the original Survivors. While he may not be in peak fighting condition, he still fights just as well as his other teammates, and (from in-game dialogue) is considered to be the mentor of the group. He is also one who canonically commits a Heroic Sacrifice, though for different reasons.
• Mass Effect:
  • Urdnot Wrex in the first game, who's ancient even for a krogan and has been a soldier and mercenary since Earth had Vikings.
  • Admiral David Anderson and Fleet Admiral Steven Hackett embody this trope for the Alliance, having fought in every major engagement of the last three decades. Anderson is said to have enough medals to melt into a life-size gold statue of himself and obtained a coveted N7 designation, while Hackett's service record is apparent from the sheer amount of scars he has across his face. Both are veterans of the First Contact War.
  • Zaeed Massani from Mass Effect 2, who is arguably the toughest member of the team aside from Garrus, and of course, Shepard.
  • Kaidan Alenko expresses feeling like one of these at the end of the third game. He's thirty-six at most by that point, but War Is Hell. Shepard him/herself expresses similar feelings despite being even younger than Kaidan, especially by the end of the game thanks to an extreme case of Heroic Fatigue, also admitting to Garrus that s/he's fairly sure his/her fighting days will be through after the war ends due to how utterly spent s/he is.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda has Nakmor Drack, who is even older than Wrex. He's not quite old enough to have been around when the krogan first got uplifted, but he can remember the immediate aftermath. He's spent his entire life, all fifteen hundred years and counting of it, fighting and killing. As a result, he's down one limb and several organs. He's also a good chef and a doting grandfather, and a good source of emotional support if you haven't upset him.
  • There's also Alec Ryder, who was born in 2129, eight years older than Anderson, also a vet of the First Contact War, holding a Pathfinder mantle for the Andromeda Initiative and an N7, meaning he serves as a One-Man Army.
• Metal Gear:
  • The End of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater takes this to its logical and literal extreme. He's over 100 years old when you battle him, prone to dozing off at random, and can die of old age if you take too long to fight him. He still manages to be That One Boss.
  • "Old" Snake by the time of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, although he had everything but the physical age by the time of the first Metal Gear Solid. Old Snake is 42. Aside from Old Snake, there are also Revolver Ocelot, who's 70 by the time of MGS4, and Big Boss, who's 79.
• The Metro series of games features Colonel Sviatoslav Melnikov (also known as "Melnik", "Miller" in the English translation), a Four-Star Badass and leader of the Spartan Order. Despite his age, and the prosthetic replacement of his lower legs in Metro Exodus after the Battle of D6, he still kicks as much, if not more, ass as the player character. Highlights include bludgeoning a cannibal to death with a helmet and ripping a path through mutants with a homemade railgun.
• Max Payne has battled his way through the underworld in three games and can even take on paramilitary forces if that's what it takes to reach and eliminate his target. In 3, this is a remarkable achievement considering his substance addiction and age. Many young mobsters and thugs underestimate Max and find themselves and their backup woefully outmatched.
• Nintendo Wars: The appropriately named Sensei from Advance Wars. His outfit is an old paratrooper uniform from WWII. It's implied that he used to be a fearsome and practically unbeatable general back in the day. His name in the original Japanese is shared with Mr. Yamamoto, a Purposely Overpowered C.O. from Super Famicom Wars, suggesting that they may have been one and the same.
  Adder: You... You're an old man! For you to have defeated me... Who... Who are you?
  Sonja: Sensei! You did it! You are victorious!
  Sensei: Hm? I am? Oh, that's nice.
  Adder: Wait! Now I remember... It was in the reports... This country once boasted a CO who was said to be unbeatable... A man whom everyone feared... Impossible... It couldn't be!
  Sensei: Who, me?
  Adder: Uh... Today was... unlucky. A bad day. We'll meet again, old... This is not finished!
  Sensei: Seemed to have pulled through in one piece. Sonja? Are you all right?
  Sonja: Sensei? You were unbeatable? Everyone... feared you?
  Sensei: Who, me? Oh, that's so long ago, I'd almost forgotten. There might have been a rumor of that nature at some point, but... Come now, there are battles yet to be fought. Let's go.
  Sonja: Yes... Yes, sir!
• Overwatch has a few:
  • Soldier:76, AKA Jack Morrison was a super soldier during the omnic crisis and one of the founding members of Overwatch. After the group was disbanded, he became a vigilante, waging a personal war to expose the truth behind Overwatch's collapse.
  • Reinhardt Wilhelm, also a founding member of the team, even at 61-years-old, still proves to be a stalwart, hammy and even jovial ally on the battlefield. He's got a giant rocket hammer, an even bigger barrier field and a suit of Powered Armor, and can soak up as much damage as he dishes out.
  • To a shorter extent, there's Torbjorn Lindholm, 57, who was Overwatch's chief engineer while the group was active. After the group was disbanded, many of his weapons and creations were stolen and stashed away around the world, and now he tries to make sure those weapons don't fall into the wrong hands.
  • Ana Amari, Jack Morrison's second in command, was the world's best sniper, until a Critical Hesitation Blunder incapacitated her and her cybernetic dominant eye was shot out by Widowmaker. After faking her own death for years, she decided to put retirement on hold to aid the people she loves, in particular her daughter, Pharah. In game, she is a support sniper whose rifle shoots darts filled with biotic chemicals that heal allies as well as damage enemies.
• StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm lampshades this concept with a mission titled exactly "Old Soldiers". This can be interpreted as not just referring to your target General Warfield, but the Player Character Sarah Kerrigan herself who is also an old soldier; she has been assimilated into the Zerg Swarm, deinfested and — by this point of the story — potentially re-infested voluntarily. Sarah has been through much hardship and is struggling to make peace.
• Peppy Hare from the Star Fox series is a veteran of the Cornerian army, having served alongside James McCloud, before the two of them broke off to form the eponymous mercenary commando unit. However, after Pigma's betrayal and James' declared death, Peppy joined up with James' son Fox as a wing pilot and mentor figure in the new Star Fox team.
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: General Rahm Kota is an old man, but he's the farthest thing from decrepit. He is a Jedi who survived Order 66 due to his distrust of clone troopers, choosing instead to train his own militia. After the fall of the Republic, Kota and his men took their fight to The Empire.
• Twisted Wonderland: Lilia Vanrouge, despite his modest height and musculature, is an elderly retired general who fought in a great war. Even in old age, he can still beat up multiple bullies bigger than him.
• Largo from Valkyria Chronicles had served in the First Europan War some twenty years before the game's events, and is one of the older members of Squad 7. It came as no surprise when he initially saw Welkin as little more than a young upstart cashing in on fame.
  • Most squad members in the game are barely teenagers. Some, however, are much older. Catherine and Musaad are also First Europan War veterans and 35- and 43-years-old respectively, and Wavy is a 37-year-old Badass Teacher. All of these pale in comparison to storm-trooper Coby, who is 65 and still kicking ass.
• In Zelda II: The Adventure of Link there are a pair of Hylian soldiers from the last great war who, despite not being at the peak of their physical ability as they once were, can still teach Link sword techniques.