Obvious spoilers ahead
Before I start, I’m going to state the concrete fact in large bold letters, so no one can squirm around it.
The whole TLOU2 cycle of revenge started with Abby’s father attempting to kill a child.
Yes, you heard it right. That doctor was about to kill a child. He deserved every bullet. In fact, Abby should have been the first to stop him. And this game utterly fails to recognize that.
Ask yourself, would you kill someone like Ellie to save yourself?
I’m sure there are some who would, but they’re not the type worth saving. People who wouldn’t sacrifice Ellie to save themselves don’t want a vaccine from Ellie, and those that would, don’t deserve it.
Now let’s dive into this trashcan.
Abby
Probably the most depraved, selfish and outright evil character in TLOU2. The lack of any empathy, or any sense of right and wrong is quite perplexing in her case. What makes it even more ludicrous is that Naughty Dog thought players would connect with this character. When Ellie tells her that Dina is pregnant in hopes it will touch some hidden human part inside Abby, it turns out Abby suddenly finds it even more pleasurable to cut her throat. She’s like, man, I’m about to score a double kill with this one.
She replies, quote: “Good!”, and proceeds to cut Dina even though the poor girl is clearly no threat to her at this point.
Then when she sees her pet is watching her behave like an animal, she luckily stops, but she stops bitterly. Because you know, she wanted that double kill so bad. And that’s just one example. I mean, how could anyone relate to this psychopathic character is a question we should be asking the ND director.
And there are some who are suggesting that Abby’s actions are no worse than those of Joel and Ellie, even justified… As some would say, shilling runs deep in TLOU2.
Let’s see if that’s true. Let’s unpack this bag.
Did Joel kill people? Sure, everyone does in TLOU. Did he needlessly torture people just to satisfy his rage? No. Did he kill Abby’s father to satisfy his thirst for revenge? No. He did it to save his adopted daughter from him.
Abby killed Joel just to get her revenge, and she fully enjoyed torturing him. She doesn’t care about the fact that her father was going to kill his child, which is why she probably didn’t care that Dina is pregnant with one either. There’s something wrong with that whole family to be honest. But it’s OK because you know, Abby plays with dogs. That’s her redeeming quality.
Ellie, on the other hand, doesn’t enjoy torturing people who killed her father. She is clearly distressed and shaken when she does. It has a severe and visible effect on her. When she finds out the woman she stabbed is pregnant, she immediately loses balance, and her hearing goes numb, even though the dying woman played her part in Joel’s murder. She clearly would not kill her if she knew she was pregnant, unlike Abby who was excited at the prospect.
Intentions matter
Abby as a character would work if Naughty Dog was just honest about this. Instead, they tried so hard to portray Joel as a villain, and push this mental idea that what he did to the Fireflies was somehow wrong.
The narrative feels like you’re shoved into a room full of Flat-Earthers, all talking and behaving as if the Earth is flat. After some time you start to feel like your IQ is going to drop. Everyone in the game behaves like Joel did something wrong, and you hold your controller in disbelief, hoping that someone with brain will come in, and finally make some sense. Even Joel is made to behave like he did something wrong, which is so dumb.
Again, removing those who want to kill your adopted daughter is not only the right thing to do, but it’s your damn duty as a parent.
Yet there is a small group of people who think otherwise, believe it or not, mainly the employed critics. I just hope they’re shilling, and don’t really mean what they say. They try to cloak it in philanthropy, oh it’s to save the human species don’t you know…
They don’t ask themselves whether the human species is worth saving if it’s willing to sacrifice a child to survive. That question is way too uncomfortable for them. The game narrative is not deep nor profound. It’s simplistic, shortsighted and petty. It doesn’t even consider the fact most players have on their mind. That a species willing to sacrifice a child for its own salvation will not get far. It may escape one extinction event, but another one will surely come if that’s how we operate. We must be better than that, and most players are better than that. Hence, the negative user reviews.
The utter failure of this game to even grasp this fact is what’s most jarring. Apparently the message of the game is you should let your child die to save human lives, and if you don’t, you deserve to be tortured with a golf club until you succumb. At least everyone in the game behaves as if this should be the norm. But then revenge is bad and all that… Like what?
Your story makes no sense Neil, and your moral philosophy is stupefying.
In fiction, every character is made by the writer, and each of them behave and think as the writer decides. A good writer tries to remove himself and his own beliefs from this process, which clearly didn’t happen here. All the characters in TLOU2 agree to this same shallow moral philosophy, including Ellie and Joel.
If the game offered a choice to the player, the user reviews would be over 80. But you don’t have a choice. You have to think and feel the way ND want’s you to feel. And that will never work.
I guess the best reply to those arguing that Joel did something wrong is actually a simple question.
You’ve never been a parent, have you?
In 99,99% of the cases you’ll find that the answer is no. Which is quite telling because almost every parent who went through the sequel is in “what the hell did I just play?” kind of mood. The narrative feels like a 20-year old wrote the story. Narrow-minded and naive.