[Author's note: I'm not really in this to win as I don't even have a steam account and I'm not much of a PC gamer anyway. I just wanted to get more involved in the dtoid community and this seemed like a really good idea which I thought I'd give a go at and it also seemed like fun.. so tally ho chaps let's get started! also cocks...]

WARNING!!! - The following post contains *spoilers* and as such should not be viewed by anyone who has not played Call of Duty 4. If you haven't played it... I don't believe you... if you really haven't go and do it now and join in on the EU Friday Night Fights because this is all we seem to play (sorry for the shameless plug.....I feel dirty now...)

Tragic Hero: Sergeant "Soap" MacTavish from Call of Duty 4



Technically speaking there are 6 characters in CoD4 whom you take control of at certain points in the game, however "Soap" is the one you spend the most time as and hence can be regarded as the main protagonist.

In terms of being "a hero who fails or suffers at the end of his or her journey" it's pretty obvious to anyone who has reached the end of CoD4 how this applies to Soap.

To recap here's a vid of the ending, one that in my opinion rivals Bioshock for one of the most cinematic moments in games.



So how exactly does he suffer?

After spending almost the entire game with Griggs, Price, and Gaz, you/Soap really form bonds with them like a real infantry unit, only for them all to be mercilessly killed at the end of the game. This really shows the dire consequences of war, that all your friends could be gone within a single moment and in this case right before your eyes as well. It's also unknown if even Soap survived as the last thing you see is Soap being air lifted into the helicopter but how serious were your/his wounds? If Price was pretty much as close to the exploding car as Soap was and he didn't make it, were the Russians quick enough to save Soap? There's no proof that the epilogue is linked to the main story or if it contains any of the same characters. It also doesn't state when in time it takes place so the question of what happened to Soap is a complete mystery. Dead? Alive? Traumatized? Used as a guinea pig for secret experiments? Was dead but came back to life for revenge of some kind who knows.....

It's a bit of a stretch but one could argue that Soap is a tragic hero in the literal sense. A true tragic hero is essentially a protagonist or character who is no more or less moral than a normal person but has a specific character flaw that leads to his/her downfall.
Now like I said this is a long shot but you could say that Soap, being a sergeant in the SAS must have extreme loyalty to his country and his duty. It is this loyalty that leads to him accept his mission with the 22nd Regiment and ultimately witness the death of his friends, possibly his own death and after saving 41 million people from 2 nuclear warheads no one will ever know.
Like I said it's a long shot.... and you could argue being a good soldier isn't really a character flaw... but you know maybe it has some weight to it... hopefully this didn't suck too hard