10 Fearsome Video Game Women You Should Never Mess With
10. The Last of Us - Ellie
I'm putting this down here because I've pissed away several hours on this masterpiece so far... and mostly because Ellie just looks so cuddly and I want to give her a hug.
Oh, by the way, she murks enough people (via firearm, bow & arrow, and switchblade) to rack up an impressive body count by the game's end.
Most of the rest of this page is a SPOILER ALERT if you haven't played the game yet.
In the game's beginning, Ellie is a foul-mouthed (no, REALLY profane) fourteen-year-old girl who has the massively good fortune of being immune to the Cordyceps, the fungus that has nearly destroyed human civilization in the game. The whole plot of the game revolves around safely delivering Ellie to a medical facility, where her immunity can be studied in the hopes of finally finding a vaccine to the apocalyptic fungus.
Now, in the post-apocalyptic America that Ellie and her gruff protector Joel have to cross, threats are everywhere. Not only do they have to contend with the depraved, savage infected (which are NOT Zombies), who have succumbed to the Cordyceps, they also have to contend with murderously violent Hunters, a band of merciless marauders who are always hostile and beyond negotiation.
No pressure.
It's no question that Joel does the lion's share of the work (Read: Killing), but after an incident incapacitates Joel, you briefly take control of Ellie, who spends that entire chapter stealthily eluding the bandits (or killing them, depending on your playstyle), and that is only after she holds her own against a fairly large wave of hungry, demented Infected, who threaten to overrun her and a partner (David) several times.
That alone would be enough, but the chapter in which you play her as a happy little ending of her being toyed with by the cannibalistic pedophile who is the leader of the bandits. Following a cat-and-mouse game of hide-and-get-shanked within the decrepit interior of a burning restaurant, Ellie finally prevails against her perverted, psychotic tormentor - and spends at least an entire minute introducing him to the business end of his own machete. Prison-style.
Now, there is another female companion early on in the story named Tess, who already has a reputation among Joel's initial residence as an extremely dangerous smuggler, and the amount of f*cks she doesn't give is epic - despite the fact that neither she (nor Ellie) have the greatest A.I. - which Naughty Dog compensated for by making them 'invisible' to enemy lines of sight. However, Tess dies an unfortunate, but defiant end early in the game, and Ellie is the significantly more developed character - one grows to appreciate her far more than you do Tess.
With that being said, I provide you with the moral of this happy little story: the ability to kick ass comes in all sizes. In Ellie's case, it just happens to be a adorable pint-sized container of survival instinct.