Samus Aran is so far ahead Drake as a gaming icon that even his sexy ass won't sway me. In clear my vote goes to Samus!

Well is there a character, or do people just like what they've made of the character?  Blank Slate beats developer made characterization. 

There is a backstory to the whole Metroid universe by the way. Even a manga explaining how she got her armor and stuff. Very interesting read by the way.

...I'll answer your question, but I'm going ot look in your collection first.

...I'm going to assume your collection is far from complete. Have you played a Metroid, and are you thereby being facetious, or are you honestly curious and looking for an answer?

According to what i saw on that video, Drake as a character repulses me, and, thus, has negative value.  Silent Sam would win by default, if lines are the only means for charaterization (which I do not think they are).

Although Samus' best lines are probably during the opening cutscene of Super Metroid.

Sigh, yes Khuutra I have played a number of the old 2d metroids, but I have not gotten into the "prime" series.  When I played Metroid there was a ship, stuff to kill, and that's about it.  I'm not even sure they had any semblence of story. Perhaps they started putting more into the story, but I don't see how people can even give a decent description of the character's personality based on Metroid games let alone decide they like it.

@Shmup

I don't think a game can have a good story and characterization because of other media.  It's like when people say Halo has a great story because of the novels, if this great story isn't in the games than what does it matter?

How many lines does Chrono have in Chrono Trigger?

The silent protaganist is much more valid a storytelling medium then your letting on.  What story is there in the Original Legend of Zelda?  Yet the original Link is a great character.  How much characterization is their in Beowulf.  Seen as one of the "bigs" when it comes to literary characters?  Beowulf the poem is a lot like an NES game.  Yet Beowulf is considered a literary great when it comes to characters.

Espeically one like Samus who did a LOT without saying anything in the first game.  Though her chacater has been going downword later on since they've decided to give Samus a treatment similar to the female characters in other games.

Still better then an Indiana Jones wanna be.

Voting has stopped but you guys obviously wanna keep talking so I won't ask for a lock.

Lord. Nevermind that this harkens back to the days when the body of a game's story or narrative was often in a manual anyway, we're going to ignore that for now.

Samus as a character for the past ten years or so has been defined in a silence, which is to say that she is defined but in an absence of her own voice. The primary characterization she achieves are through writings or testimonies about her, such as when the space pirates refer to the "Hunter" in all three Prime games, or in how the Federation deals with her and treats her as an asset. She has been defined by the Chozo, by the Luminoth, by the Pirates.... only once has she ever had to speak for herself, and that was in Fusion, though she narrated quite a lot of that.

Yes, she is characterized, but it is a sort of negative characterization that extends from people responding to emptiness, rather than someone making noise in the emptiness itself.

What if it's official media though? At the time, companies like Nintendo had to use instruction booklets or game intros to tell most of the stories because of the quality of the hardware they were using. With that said, when we played games like Metroid, it was usually for the gameplay, but we still knew that the actions of the little "sprite" we saw on the screen could have repercussions on the whole world later on! It was just interpreted differently with what medium they had at the time.

Now, someone might refute this and say that "Nowadays, we have the ability to tell stories like in Hollywood in video games, so characters should be more interesting now," but it's not essentially true. I believe people are spoiled by the new "multi-media" generation of gaming, and they're forgetting that games should be about the gameplay first and story later (where is the line between a game and a digital movie? not really the word I'm looking for, but you get the point). Some developers prefer to focus most of their energy on gameplay instead of creating minutes of cutscenes. In this kind of game, the main focus is to not tell an important story with morals and stuff (Halo for example). What they didn't necessarily want to put in the game because it didn't fit can be done in other medias. When developers try to do everything at the same time, it sometimes doesn't come out good. You either get good gameplay or good story, and I'm sure it's always been like that.

Anyways, I believe there can be a balance with in-game story and other media. Some of the best stories are told when there's essentially no cutscenes and it's mostly up to personal interpretation. Games like BioShock and Half-Life 1/2 excel in that department, and in a way, the Metroid franchise has always been doing that. Plus, it plays and feels like a game.