I watched someone play the first hours of TLoU2 and a specific scene was so bad and so terribly insulting narrative-wise that it turned me off from the rest of the game. I even looked up spoilers as to what happens afterward and (total game spoilers I guess, don't read unless you''ve completed TLoU2):
Are Abby and her group idiots? No, of course not. They've plotted this act of revenge and have executed it over a period of years. They want Joel dead for what he did at the end of the previous game. Odds are they've done a lot of things and hurt at least some people on this treacherous path, this incessant compulsion to go fuck him up. It's not like they'd just looked up his location online, taken a plane, and knocked on his front door. They'd invested time; time that's established as at a premium in a fleeting, apocalyptic setting; time and effort that could've been spent doing other things that would've meant more (to someone else, at least) than cold-hearted revenge.
So they finally find Joel, torture him, and kill him in a brutality that equals to what he did to the Fireflies back then. And... they leave Tommie and Ellie alive after they'd watched the whole thing. Tommy, a former Firefly and survivor, someone who'd possibly have tactical knowledge of the group, where their could be based, etc. and likely has some command over the settlement in which he and Ellie reside. And Ellie, someone who straight up tells Abby that she'd kill her (and her group) out of revenge to their faces. And remember that Tommy was already with Joel when Abby and her group "caught" them, so the decision to leave him alive in particular had to be deliberate.
Armed with pistols, numbers, and a singular hatred so strong that they've followed through on it after years of care and consideration, hell even after Joel saved Abby from the clickers right before - and the latter wasn't enough to grant Joel a merciful death, he still needed to experience all of the agony he had been responsible for. Understandable and it paints Abby and her group as like I've said, singular in their wanting for his destruction.
But they leave witnesses. Witnesses that have sworn to come back for them in bloodlust. Witnesses that could identify them by their clothing (why the group didn't hide their identities is just... ) and that could inform others (like their entire settlement). A group that showed some hesitation early on because they feared having to take on that settlement, because one of the women was pregnant...
And what do you know, the story gifts them Joel on their doorstep, with no requirement to sneak into or siege the settlement, and with just two other people that they could easily eliminate. So why the fuck don't they put bullets into Tommy and Ellie? The only witnesses to their identities and their heinous acts. (I'll even take it up a notch, with the level of singular hatred that Abby and the group showed, they could've killed Tommy and Ellie while Joel was alive so that he could watch, before then killing him. Because that's the sort of hell they clearly wanted to inflict on Joel and one that would mirror his massacre of their loved ones.)
Naughty Dog created this world where people may not make the same decisions as people from our world. People like us - us - may be compassionate. We may let Tommy and Ellie live because we just needed Joel (and only Joel) dead. But our world is not that world. A world where Abby and her group would spend years to find and torture Joel, risking everything for revenge, and a wholly justified one in their eyes. And they kill and brutalize him BUT leave witnesses who both have an idea as to their identities and who'll undoubtedly come for them just like they came after Joel. This scene is what sets the entire narrative of the game into being. Into existing. In the world that Naughty Dog created, Abby would've killed Joel, Tommy, Ellie, and then simply left. Chances are no one would have even discovered it was them, because Joel and Tommy have assuredly pissed off a ton of dangerous people.
So are Abby and her group idiots? No. But the writers of the game don't seem to think much of us, the audience. Not enough that we should care about these poorly-written characters and not if they can't even be consistent with the world that they're trying to immerse us in. I've seen others online feel similar about that scene/plot point, what it entails, and even how it could've been done a dozen other ways and still be less nonsensical. And with what happens later in the narrative, it all comes off like such an infantile, romanticized attempt at a revenge story that does nothing but leave a bad taste in your mouth.
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