The character and the game faced a lot of backlash for this very reason
Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part 2 was greatly anticipated by every PS4 gamer after the immense success of the first part. While the game didn’t disappoint in the gameplay and graphics, it’s story left players angry and they didn’t hold back on raging at the developers. Even the voice actors got hate which was completely inexcusable.
We are at that stage in video games where the story plays a big role in the game’s success. Naughty Dog had a reputation for its story-driven games after the success of the Uncharted series and the first The Last of Us game.
Abby’s importance
The game gets off to a grest start, we see Joel and Ellie and their camp doing what they can to survive, and establishing some sort of normalcy amid the unfavourable conditions outside. But things change when Joel gets brutally murdered at the hands of Abbie and her crew even before the game reached a quarter of its story. Afterwards, Abbie becomes the protagonist and we switch back and forth between her and Ellie.
As players, our first mistake was to think Joel and Ellie were the protagonists. Joel did some pretty brutal stuff inorder to save Ellie’s life. He prioritized one life over developing a cure to stop outbreak. He unknowingly killed Abby’s father among the other fireflies. While Abby is guilty of committing crimes as heinous as Ellie did, she was just one among the many who was trying to survive in an indecent world. People often forget that Ellie’s quest for vengeance for the Scars is just as intense, if not more, than Abby’s.
Therefore, the conclusion is that there is no beloved character in the game, and nobody is morally sound.
(Cover: Naughty Dog)