The Best GTA Protagonists, Ranked

Who is the best GTA protagonist? Fans have been arguing about it for twenty years, and one name comes up more than any other: Carl “CJ” Johnson, the hero of San Andreas. But the series has lined up a gallery of unforgettable antiheroes, from the tragic Niko Bellic to the unpredictable Trevor. Here’s our ranking of the protagonists who left their mark on Grand Theft Auto, and above all what makes each of them iconic.

What makes a great Rockstar protagonist

A good GTA hero comes down to three things. First, attachment: do you want to follow him, protect him, see how his story ends? Then writing: the depth of the character, the quality of his arc, the way the game uses him to say something about America. And finally his role in the gameplay: some protagonists flat-out reshaped the structure of the series.

It’s the exact mirror of our ranking of the best villains in the series: a hero is often only worth as much as the drama he goes through. And if GTA has held up for so long, it’s also because Rockstar knew how to give its criminals real human depth, as we explain in our feature on why GTA 5 is still going strong since 2013.

CJ and Niko, the two writing high points

If a single GTA had to take home the best-protagonist trophy, two games would fight for the honor. San Andreas first, with Carl Johnson. The game doesn’t just tell the story of a return home after a mother’s death: it makes CJ the most playable hero in the series, with his muscle and stamina stats, his haircuts, his tattoos, and a reputation to maintain among the gangs. We relive the whole epic in our San Andreas retrospective.

GTA IV next, with Niko Bellic. Where CJ wins on attachment, Niko wins on depth. An immigrant eaten up by guilt and by what he saw in the war, he arrives in Liberty City chasing a second chance and runs headlong into a cardboard American Dream. It’s that seriousness that earned the game a 98 on Metacritic, one of the very highest scores in the history of the medium. We dig into it in our GTA IV retrospective.

GTA V: three playable heroes for the price of one

In 2013, Rockstar took the biggest narrative risk in the saga: instead of one hero, GTA V offers three, switching between them on the fly, even mid-shootout. The studio said it had dreamed up the idea as far back as San Andreas but couldn’t pull it off on the hardware of the time. Michael the reformed robber, Franklin the ambitious one, and Trevor the psychopath make up a trio that completes and despises itself in equal measure, and that constant switching remains the biggest structural innovation in the series.

The bet paid off beyond anything: GTA V is approaching 230 million units sold according to Take-Two’s latest results, making it the best-selling game in the franchise and one of the most profitable cultural products of all time. We tell the story of how this cast was built, captured in full performance capture, in our feature on the actors behind GTA V.

Depending on the ending you choose, the trio either gets out together or tears itself apart, a dilemma we break down in our guide to the different GTA 5 endings.

Tommy Vercetti and Claude, the founding fathers

You can’t rank GTA’s heroes without saluting the ones who started it all. Tommy Vercetti is the first speaking protagonist in the series. In 2002, Rockstar went all in and gave him the voice of Ray Liotta, the Goodfellas star, to play a kingpin fresh out of prison who takes control of a Vice City modeled on the Miami of Scarface. Pastel suits and neon included, he defined an aesthetic the saga has never forgotten, as our Vice City retrospective reminds us.

A year earlier, Claude kept a far lower profile in GTA III, but his role may be the most important of all. This completely silent protagonist, betrayed in the intro by his accomplice Catalina, is the empty shell every player projected themselves onto. And it’s with him that the saga made the leap into 3D and laid down the open-world template that all of gaming has copied since. To place every entry in context, our guide to all the GTA games in order lays it all out.

Five names not to forget

Five more heroes earn a spot on the honor roll. Victor Vance, Lance’s older brother, is the lead in Vice City Stories (2006). Toni Cipriani, the Leone family’s enforcer, carries Liberty City Stories (2005). On GTA IV, the two expansions delivered standout protagonists: biker Johnny Klebitz in The Lost and Damned (2009) and hired muscle Luis Lopez in The Ballad of Gay Tony (2009). And Huang Lee single-handedly carried the excellent Chinatown Wars (2009) on Nintendo DS.

Can you still play as them today?

Good news: nearly all of these heroes are still playable. Claude, Tommy, and CJ came back in The Trilogy: The Definitive Edition, with modernized controls. Niko runs again on recent platforms, and the GTA V trio keeps going on PC as well as next-gen consoles.

One question is still on every fan’s lips: what will the protagonists of Grand Theft Auto VI look like? For the first time, the series is putting a duo front and center, Jason and Lucia, and we’re already poring over every detail in our breakdown of the Jason and Lucia duo. While we wait to find out whether they’ll join this pantheon, here’s our full ranking of the best GTA protagonists, from the unforgettable CJ to the silent founder Claude.