Borderlands 2’s Ellie is the “exact opposite” of female character stereotypes

Remember back in Borderlands, when Scooter told you that the Catch-a-Ride out near Fyrestone was “more busted than my momma’s girl parts”? Now we know why – Scooter’s big sister is, uh, pretty big.

First glimpsed in last week’s “Wimoweh” trailer, Borderlands 2’s Ellie is the woman that breaks every stereotype about female video game characters, probably with that humongous wrench she lugs around everywhere with her.

“Ellie is Scooter’s sister. From a pure purpose level, we needed a character to introduce our new Bandit Technical vehicle, and since we were already using Scooter elsewhere in the game, it didn’t make sense for him to do it. Still, Scooter is ‘the car guy’ in our universe and it felt like anyone who introduced a new car should still be connected to him in some way. Thus, Ellie was born,” the Gearbox team told PC Gamer.

“The narrative goal with Ellie was to have a character who hits all of the tick marks of a good Borderlands character (funny, unexpected, looks as if they could probably kill you in thirteen different ways if you got on their bad side), while also making an independent female character who looked the exact opposite of how most females tend to be represented in games. We also wanted to make sure that, through her dialogue and visual design, we never cast her in a light where the player is encouraged to pity, laugh at, or mock her because she doesn’t look like Jessica Rabbit.”

And because she’s lugging around a humongous wrench, and looks like she knows how to use it.

“She does straight-up murder a dude in a really gory way less than ten seconds after you meet her,” Gearbox added. “So, there’s that.”

I’m just disappointed she’s an NPC and not one of the player characters. She’s got loads of pockets and pouches, and that’s just what you need when you’re looting an entire planet.