Stoic Woobie / Video Games

• Gorath from Betrayal at Krondor: His decision to do the right and very difficult thing - trying to bring peace between two nations that have been warring since forever and fully intend to keep doing so - has cost him everything, but don't expect to ever hear anything about it from him.
• Borderlands 2 has Tiny Tina as a Woobie whose stoicism manifests as cheerfulness that frequently crosses over into mania. In fact, she comes off as in denial of her tragedies, even in the midst of torturing her parents' killer to death. The one time the facade drops is when she admits that she is well aware that her good friend Roland died, despite seemingly leaving a chair for him at her gaming table.
• Chuck Greene, the mostly unflappable hero of Dead Rising 2. Before the events of the game^note an event given more detail in the Road To Fortune tie-in comic, he lost his wife to a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, leading to his stoic attitude in the present. To go into detail, his wife was infected, forcing Chuck to put her down in order to protect their daughter Katey, but not before she was bitten by her zombified mother. Despite his recent loss, he spends little time being mournful onscreen. Instead, Chuck is more concerned about his daughter's welfare, as Katey requires daily doses of an expensive drug called "Zombrex" to prevent her from turning into a zombie. After the Vegas outbreak, Chuck's life becomes a daily struggle to make enough money to buy Zombrex, often putting his life on the line for his daughter, who is his sole reason for living at this point. Chuck rarely expresses any fear or sadness over his current situation; he's simply a person who does whatever is necessary for his loved ones. Although he remains more or less stoic throughout the game, the Bad Ending (if Katey dies) shows Chuck's composure break, losing all will to live and silently allowing himself to be Devoured by the Horde while clutching Katey's backpack.
• Dishonored: dark protagonist Corvo Attano watches his lover the Empress killed, his daughter kidnapped and gets framed for both crimes - all in the span of half a minute. He then spends six months being jailed and tortured by the people who framed him before he can get free to start fixing things. Later on, the people he signed on with to get revenge betray him too because they can't risk him fouling up their own efforts either. In the sequel, if chosen as the player-character, he gets betrayed once again by turncoats, stripped of his arcane powers, watches his daughter be turned to stone, sees his daughter's Childhood Friend murdered in front of him and has to flee the city - all of it done by the government of his own homeland and the embittered half-sister of his lover. That's not even touching on his backstory of being a poor boy whose father died when he was young and had to make a living by self-taught fighting, or how how his newfound voice in the sequel hints to just how much hurt he carries between the events of the two games, or getting a constant running commentary on his misfortunes by his self-involved patron outer god. And yet, not once does he ever seem to actually complain to anyone about where he is or heap his inner turmoil on them - instead he busies himself hunting down all the people who wronged him and making them pay, one way or another.
• Fallout: New Vegas has Craig Boone, a former member of the New California Republic's First Recon battalion. He took part in the Bitter Springs massacre, where, because of a miscommunication, the First Recon were ordered to gun down innocent civilians, including women, children, and the elderly. He was haunted by this until he met his future wife, Carla, who he loved enough for him to forget about Bitter Springs. Eventually, though, Carla was kidnapped by Caesar's Legion to be sold into slavery, and Boone was forced to Mercy Kill her. This event caused him to believe that fate was punishing him for Bitter Springs, and that it would only end upon his death. By the time the player meets him, Boone actively pushes people away because he believes that nothing except death and suffering will happen to him or those around him ever again.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Cloud Strife. Lonely, alienated childhood, check. Told that he was too weak to join SOLDIER, which was his dream, check. Watched his mother killed, best friend almost killed, and childhood crush apparently mortally wounded, check. Used as a human guinea pig by Hojo, check. Is dragged across a continent by his best friend while Shinra chases them and can't do anything when they catch up and kill said best friend, check. Resulting in Trauma-Induced Amnesia, check. Manipulated into almost killing a potential love interest, twice, check. Same manipulation and a serious Mind Screw result in him giving the Big Bad the black materia, again twice, check. Watching Aerith die, check. Realizing he'd promised to be his living legacy and to never forget, and then having ''forgotten'', check. Failing to find a cure for Geostigma and coming down with it himself, check...
    • Vincent Valentine never got along with his father, as said father reveals when Lucrecia kills him by accident. Vincent is then employed as Lucrecia's bodyguard and falls in love with her, despite his discovery that she watched his father die. She then also sleeps with Hojo, her evil boss, which Vincent claims he's fine with so long as she's happy. She falls ill while bearing Hojo's child, so Vincent confronts Hojo, only to be killed by him for being 'noisy'. Lucrecia brings him back to life by making him a host of Chaos, then apologises while locking herself away in a Mako crystal. Vincent wakes up, discovers he's now immortal and that Lucrecia is gone, and then locks himself away again for 30 years as atonement for his 'sin' (which is, apparently, merely watching Hojo's experiment). Cloud and co. wake him up later only to inform him that Lucrecia's child has become the homicidal, world-ending Sephiroth. Despite how much he has suffered at the hands of Hojo, and in general, he doesn't let his angst show, and even wishes that Hojo rest in peace when the heroes kill him in-game.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy: The Warrior of Light, the protagonist from the original Final Fantasy never falters or stops trying to do the right thing, this leads many of the other heroes to think he has no doubts (which is incorrect). He does let his woobieness show when he and the other heroes are on their way to fight Chaos, and the Warrior opens up about feeling more and more uneasy the others are regaining their memories while he is not. That of course is only the tip of the iceberg, turns out he can't remember a past because he was born during the cycles of war between Cosmos and Chaos. Having been created by Cid in a previous cycle of the conflict and abandoned by his father to fend for himself in a warzone.
• Soren from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn fits this very well, though he sometimes borders on Jerkass Woobie territory. He comes off as being cold and unkind, and is the Greil Mercenaries' resident Spock. You'd never guess that he has a Tear Jerker past...but does he ever. Thing is, though, this past is revealed through support conversations and other bits of the story that are easy to miss, so even the player might not realize it.
• In Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Ezekiel, aka Zeke, is a kind-hearted and handsome Reasonable Authority Figure who turns out to have had one Hell of a Dark and Troubled Past as Camus, the Anti-Villain from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light. He doesn't have it easy in Valentia either, due to his Trauma-Induced Amnesia and how, despite his girlfriend Tatiana's unconditional love, he was treated harshly until Emperor Rudolf put his faith in him. And he's also Forced into Evil by having Tatiana taken prisoner by Nuibaba, requiring the help of the cast to rescue her (and if she's not rescued, he will die fighting Alm and Co). Regardless, Zeke rarely if ever discusses his huge problems with Alm or Tatiana, remains stonefaced and strongwilled, and keeps going on. Pretty much the only way to truly break him is killing Tatiana off.
• Fire Emblem Fates:
  • Azura suffered from abuse in Nohr and Fantastic Racism in Hoshido, is cursed with powers that are vital to winning the war but slowly kill her when used, and is literally unable to tell anyone what she knows about the Greater-Scope Villain due to another curse; the result of all this has left her incredibly jaded, but she never complains and never gives up trying to help.
  • Saizo found out who was responsible for the death of his and Kaze's father, and went to go take revenge... which simply resulted in him getting his eye slashed out and almost dying. Oh, and he never told Kaze about this, so he had to suffer alone about it for years, and in their supports Kaze himself is incredibly shocked at the amount of secret suffering his brother has gone through. Then there's the fact that, depending on the route taken, he and Kaze can end up fighting each other, which counts for both of them. And yet Saizo keeps carrying on his duties, keeping his inner troubles aside...
• Ib: The title character. First she's separated from her parents. Then she has to explore a dark, surreal gallery where the very paintings are out for your blood. We realize later that she's starting to hallucinate - first as a comfort mechanism... then even that turns into her seeing hanged effigies of herself around the place. Depending on your ending, her suffering ranges from seeing one of her friends die, to being so broken that she simply lies down, and doesn't get up again. And throughout the game, she never utters a word, nor does anyone point out the strenuousness of what she's dealing with (aside from Garry during one Not So Stoic moment). Have we mentioned that she's nine yet?
• Princess Zelda gets this treatment in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which gives her a personality of The High Queen. She's suffering deeply for the tragedies inflicted on her people and her kingdom, but she doesn't dare show it because the enemy could easily exploit any perceived weakness.
• Mass Effect:
  • Kaidan Alenko. He joins the Alliance Navy to do good, despite the abuse he suffered as teenager in an Alliance program, and he refuses to dwell on it. Or at least, so he says, in the conversations with him he dwells quite a lot on it, especially if your Shepard is female. It still seems to affect him, but he insists it does not:
    Kaidan: "I've put my personal demons to rest long ago."
  • Thane Krios, the Atoner who's dying of a disease. Was forced into assassin training at age 6, thus had no formal education in anything else and had to continue the job to win money for his family, his wife was killed by people trying to go after him and his son hates him for having left afterwards. Nonetheless, he remains the quiet and calm individual he is, only shedding Manly Tears when the situation warrants it.
• Max Payne only wanted to live The American Dream and instead turned into a merciless Vigilante Man who carries an absurd amount of emotional baggage with him. Sadly, by the flashback events of the third game, he's washed down any prayer of finding happiness again down in a swill of whiskey and painkillers. He moves to Brazil, where has an unending supply of material comforts, but is still completely down on himself and feels out of place on top of it all. He figures he can live out his life there and, while he'll never be mentally stable again, will be able to get by until whatever kills him.
• Metal Gear Solid:
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: The Boss. She lost her son on the beaches of Normandy when the Philosophers kidnapped him. She was subjected to high levels of radiation from atomic tests, was sent into space in a highly dangerous test launch of a prototype spacecraft but treated badly because she wasn't the 'official' first in space. She was separated for years from the man she trained and was a surrogate son to her. During the separation she was sent on a mission to kill the father of her child. The next time she met the man she trained she knew that she would have to defect and break his heart, even though the defection was a ruse planned by the US Government to get their hands on a fortune to fund their war. During the mission she is blamed for an atomic explosion caused by the insane general she was supposedly defecting to, accepting the blame to stop all-out nuclear war. She knows that she has to be killed by the man who was like a son to her, and can never reveal that she didn't betray him or her country. Finally, she would go to her grave in silence, knowing that future generations would believe her to be a monster who would have allowed the world to burn in nuclear fire. But not once did she break down or abandon the mission. "A normal person would have broken under the pressure" indeed.
  • Ocelot grew up as a child soldier after being kidnapped by The Philosophers, his best friend and mentor Big Boss gets effectively killed, His arm gets cut off as part of The Plan to revive Big Boss, He gets labelled a terrorist and traitor by everyone (even people on his own side), has hypnotherapy and nano-machines to convince The Patriots he's Liquid knowing that it will lead to his death and he has to play the bad guy to motivate Snake. All to resurrect his best friend (and crush) Big Boss, who he knew he would never get to see again as the plan would lead to his (Ocelot's) death. He suffers everyone on the entire planet Earth thinking that he's pure evil, even though he's trying to free them from The Patriots control and not once does he break down, just grimly continues playing the bad guy until his death at the hands of his best friend's son.
• Onmyōji: Let's see what Seimei has to go through: losing his memory, having to keep peace and order for an entire city on the verge of destruction, getting blamed for disasters he doesn't remember causing with the fear of Amnesiac Dissonance on top of that, learning that the bad guy is himself, but not really, and finally having one of his friends turn on him and become the Greater-Scope Villain than the aforementioned, among other things. It's quite impressive how he remains calm and composed through all of that. Still, you definitely don't want to piss him off though.
• Shinjiro Aragaki in Persona 3. Let's go over his life: First of all, he's an orphan. Second, one of his childhood friends died in a fire. Third, two years prior to the beginning of the series, he lost control of his Persona and accidentally killed a woman, orphaning her son. As a result, he left SEES and began living as an outcast. During those two years, he began taking drugs to help control his Persona. Said drugs are slowly killing him. When he learns that Ken, the boy he orphaned has joined SEES, he decides to rejoin. During that time, he tries to maintain a distance between himself and the others. He has his own Social Link with the female protagonist where it becomes painfully clear that he really is a nice guy, and he slowly falls in love with her. However, Shinjiro is certain that he doesn't have much time left and is extremely reluctant to pursue those feelings, especially since he realizes that Ken joined SEES in order to seek revenge on him. Shinjiro ultimately either dies at Takaya's hands or falls into a coma, waking up just in time to see the girl he loves die. Despite everything, he never complains or gives any indication that he's suffering.
• Cyrus from Pokémon. When you get down to it, his entire motivation is his unhappiness with his own life and his failure to live up to his parents' perfect standards, to the point where he refuses to let himself feel anything—and thinks the entire world would be better off not feeling anything either. You don't hear any of this from him, or even while he's still in the game. You don't hear a whisper of his backstory until he's either run off in shame or gone into self-imposed exile (depending on version).
• Psychonauts' Sasha Nein, a Psychonaut agent who has acquired such a high degree of self-control that the very surface of his mind is nothing but a smooth cube painted with abstract black-and-white patterns. However, he has seen some rather traumatizing things in his past, notably, how his father viewed his late mother, as a little boy.
• Resident Evil:
  • On Leon's first day as a police officer he's forced into the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse, during which he's shot and led to believe his Love Interest died, and after he escapes he's blackmailed into working for the government lest they experiment on the young girl he and Claire were trying to save. He's sent to investigate a drug lord where he meets Manuela, an innocent girl he sets out to protect who either dies in the bad ending or is taken in by the government in the good. Oh, and his friend Krauser resents the role he was blackmailed into doing and as such becomes his enemy. Then he's sent to rescue the president's daughter, in the process getting beaten up a ridiculous amount by the bad guys, injected with a mind controlling parasite that causes him a lot of physical pain and nearly leads him to kill the Back from the Dead Love Interest, and having to watch anyone who tries to help him die. Apart from the occasional instance of Say My Name when a comrade dies you never hear him angsting over it, despite having good reason to.
  • Resident Evil remake and Resident Evil 0: Between the two games, we learn that Rebecca Chambers has seen almost all of her teammates die and has been struggling to stay alive for two straight days, and yet when Chris finds her she's still holding onto her composure quite well for an 18-year-old medic with no prior combat experience. Her grip on it is a fragile one, though; if Chris visits her right after Richard's Heroic Sacrifice, Rebecca will break down crying from the emotional stress.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: Knuckles the Echidna. Despite his tough, stoic exterior and his devotion to guarding the Master Emerald as the Last of His Kind, he was shown to deeply resent the loneliness that comes with it, and some of his official character profiles state that he wishes he could be as free and well-liked as Sonic (not that he would ever admit to envy him). The very first cutscene in his story in Sonic Adventure shows him musing on the nature of his thankless job while alone, and his Image Song from Sonic Adventure 2 has lines such as "He's searching for shining. But every time he looks for the sun, he can't find it" and "Is this the way, the path I chose? Then why am I living with my heart so cold? All that I see is a storm of stones." Later games downplayed this side of his as he got Flanderized into comedy relief, but it was brought back in Sonic Frontiers' prequel animated short Divergence.
• When you look at his personality, his goals, and his motive for fighting in the 2nd Maverick Wars never mind him being on the wrong side of said war, Harpuia is quite a complex, tragic character, and people love him for it.
• Michael "Iceman" Casey in the first Wing Commander installment. He rarely opens up to any other pilot aboard Tiger's Claw, and will only talk about things relevant to his job - to kill and get revenge on the Kilrathi enemies that destroyed his homeworld, Vega VII, and left him a deep, permanent scar in the heart. Cold, efficient, and calculating, some pilots even worry that he has a freon for blood.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Taion is initially cold and somewhat abrasive, and even once he loosens up, he still refuses to present himself as vulnerable by keeping a poker-faced demeanor at all times. However, this, combined with his tendency to stay out of the front row in a battle, is the result of him having to flee Colony Lambda in his early Terms, causing him to believe he was responsible for the death of his mentor, Nimue. With him seeing it as his biggest regret, Taion refuses to let himself be outspoken lest it brings his allies to the brink of death again, with Noah and Eunie collectively helping him to come out of his shell.

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