The game does an awful job selling it's cycle of violence message and showing that seeking revenge will destroy you. While Abby suffered consequences of her actions, she could only make steps to becoming a better person AFTER getting her revenge she had been single mindedly obsessing over for years. Abby is still irredeemable and taking care of Lev changes nothing, just as Joel protecting Ellie did nothing. Ellie should have suffered different consequences imo. To me, it makes no sense that Dina isn't at all bothered that her former long time boyfriend and father of her son is dead due to being involved in Ellie's rampage. I think a person in Dina's position would have left Ellie on her own, with Dina and Jesse honestly being the only redeemable characters. Tommy's weird swap from being okay with leaving Seattle to berating Ellie for not wanting to go to Santa Barbra made no sense to me, obviously Joel wouldn't have wanted that for Ellie, also he should be fucking dead. Ellie and Abby aren't at all sympathetic to me. They are also very very very stupid. Ellie snaps and for some reason people are like "yeah that makes sense, let's do that", Tommy was dumb as fuck for going to Seattle before Ellie, Abby should not have spared Ellie and Tommy because she should know first hand what someone who's father was brutally murdered will do, yes Joel revealing himself is still stupid because 4 years of the good life doesn't undo 21 years of being a smuggler/hunter/overall very cautious survivor, Jesse just gets cucked and dies when he could have had a much greater bearing on the plot, Dina is willing to ruin her life alongside Ellie just cause they fucked and smoked some weed together, they're 19 for fucks sake, I don't buy that they're that attached already.
The game just hurts my brain to think about, Neil Druckmann and the other head writer have completely different interpretations of their own story, not everything should be up for interpretation. They can defend weird plot holes involving character actions by saying "people are complex", no Neil, make a concrete statement and have the balls to stick with it. For a game that has no sense of subtlety, it still somehow doesn't say much at all about really anything. All of the characters in TLOU 1 were consistent throughout, wether they were protagonists or antagonists, likable or not, it was always perfectly clear while still not directly slapping you in the face with it why Joel, Ellie, Tess, Marlene, Bill, or David make the decisions they make, remain consistent throughout, but still manage to surprise you. Joel massacring the fireflies was both shocking but understandable based on Joel's traits and previous actions, David being revealed to be a predator / cannibal was also a mind fuck but all the ground work had been laid to make it understandable, you got why Marlene was willing to sacrifice Ellie but that she still loved her.
