15 New Video Game Heroes - Ranked From Worst To Best

3. Ellie (The Last Of Us)

What? Where's Joel?!

Well... even if you can totally empathise with his whole 'dooming the world to save his new surrogate daughter' thing (which I can), the main takeaway is ultimately that he's a bad egg. We know Joel had some shady background as a trader, was involved in keeping himself and brother Tommy alive in a way that "gave [Tommy] nightmares", and executed Marlene at the last second for the sake of making a clean getaway. Oh, and he lies about the latter, resulting in his 'daughter' going on the warpath, as seen in The Last of Us 2.

On the other hand is Ellie, and though living in this cordycep-infected world has forced her to be very cut and dry with personal relations, at the core she's courageous, willing to believe the good in those around her, and even wants to sacrifice herself to help synthesise a cure for humankind.

It's precisely because the world around her is so mired in desperation that Ellie being forthright and logical stands out - something that for as much as many of us all love Joel, ends up putting her here instead of him.