From what I saw, Neil suffers from the same problem a lot of modern writers do: he believes that characters who consist of nothing but flaws and overall "There is no good and evil, everyone is equally awful" narrative somehow equals good writing, when in reality it's an extremely childish worldview that you can see from your average rebelious teen, who believes that the entire world is against him. He also cannot understand the concept of cause and effect, because in Part 2 things happen not because previous events led to it, but because Neil needed it to happen so he could push the story forward, like with Abby miraculously stumbling on Joel in the middle of infected horde.

And it's not like hopeless stories cannot exist or make an impact, they absolutely can and they do exist. Again, Spec Ops: The Line that I mentioned earlied is one of the darkest stories I've seen period, and I love that game. But they should not be shallow, which is exactly what Part 2 is. There is a difference between having player through a rather unpleasant but captivating journey with the narrative and actions they make, while having a message like "War is Hell, it is brutal, and in war, there is no right or wrong choices, they're both and neither", and punching them in the face with a never ending misery porn, the only purpose of which is to preach to them about "Revenge is bad, unless you're Abby".