At My Limit: Ellie

I know I said that I would be doing a 3 part series on Anita Sarkeesian, but I encountered some problems with that. Mainly that for part two I would be reiterating a lot of what was said in the first part. So, I've decided to talk about something different, but still relevant to the original topic. The Last of Us is a game that came out a little less than a week ago, and received outstanding reviews. Though the main protagonist for most of the game is a middle aged man named Joel, his travelling companion Ellie is the character that stands out to me the most.

Ellie is a fourteen year old girl who spits in the face of all the tropes that are commonly used with female characters in video games. She is independent, foul mouthed, gritty, and can pretty well take care of herself. Through the first third of the game, she doesn't really do much. This is not for lack of trying, but rather because Joel believes that she shouldn't help. After all, she's just a fourteen year old girl, what can she do. In this portion of the game, she only does simple tasks such as crawling through air ducts to open locked doors, or being lifted up to help access other areas. However, after this, she becomes a full fledged AI companion.

The turning point comes when Ellie saves Joel from being drowned by shooting his attacker in the head. From now on, she has a gun, and helps you in combat. Previously, she only occasionally involved herself in combat. She would toss a bottle at an enemy, or yell at them to distract them. Now she carries firearms and helps you dispatch of those who are hostile to you. She saved my neck multiple times while playing it myself.

Over the year in the game, Joel and Ellie form a unique, father daughter like bond with each other. The two exchange witty banter, but also discuss many things about their own lives. During the course of the game, Ellie saves Joel more than he saves her. You even get to play as Ellie for a decent portion of the game, and she defies tropes left and right through the whole thing. She gets captured at one point, but instead of being a typical damsel, she engineers her own escape and kills her captor.

Ellie is definitely the star of The Last of Us. When Naughty Dog developed this game, they were right to put her on the front cover. She is actually a great example of a legitimate strong female character in storytelling as a whole. She does not mold to the helpful damsel, or ice queen archetypes, but instead keeps her own individuality and grows through out the game. I would even go so far to say that her personality is more interesting than Joel's. Ellie is definitely one of my favorite characters in any video game. Next week I'll be giving a full review of The Last of Us, so keep your eyes peeled for that.