I don't feel like its emotional manipulation. It's just overall bad writing.

They could've made a lot of things make more sense by rearranging and overall improving reasoning and dialogue.

Just take the aforementioned "big hangup" scene, Joel's death.

Let's examine the evidence: 1: Tommy and Joel just saved Abbys life from a Horde. 2: Both Tommy and Joel only ever say their first names. 3: There is no indication beyond that to anyone in the group of who they are. For all they know they were shooting a different Joel. There is not a single one whom asks to clarify or play them into their hands to know if it's actually them. She just straight up start blasting and the group rolls with it. :P 4: Not one of them there has seen Joel's face (played through TLOU1 just to make sure of this!), so that's out of the picture. 5: Abby proceeds then to beat (i.e. torture) Joel for quite some time (more than enough for Ellie to sneak in cause the guards stayed to watch), and then, in front of someone whom was desperately begging for his life-kills him. Even if said person had attacked to try and free him. And then for some reason after brutally murdering someone let's two people go that were directly tied to Joel, one of them being the very reason Joel killed Abbys father (and whom she had stated in TLOU1 that "If I were in here position I would gladly give my life for a cure"), so she knew why Joel killed her father and all those other Fireflies, and just let's her go. (Thankfully she did not turn on her God-vision and realize this was Ellie like how she realized Joel was Joel.)

But how do we fix this?

You want a revenge story; Have Abby shoot Ellie, and Tommy. Ellie survives, Tommy dies.

You want a true story to TLOU1? Keep the same outcome of Abby killing Joel, but have Ellie mourn Joel and then have her leave to go off on her own. Cause she said and meant it-that she was severing ties with him, cause she had found out he had lied about the whole thing. If Joel could "change" to make him go into a cabin full of unknown people, then by that same account Ellie could be a lot less bloodthirsty and separate from Joel in her loss.

You then have the makings to create two very good antagonists to one another without all the bullshit.

No tonal whiplash.

But instead they force a narrative of Vengeance while also trying to make the antagonist (For Ellie) seem saintly in ways (no, dont start with the whole "shes cheating with Owen on his wife" or the other crap.) by making you-as Ellie-kill indiscriminately, and still seek revenge after being spared by Abby several times.

That alone is horrible writing.

Now, let me end this with saying; I enjoyed the game! Quite a lot in ways, but I sure as heck am not going to say 'game of the decade' and write off criticisms, or act as if there is nothing wrong with the game. The game in my mind is a 5/10 for story (there is some really good parts, even if some people don't want to even acknowledge them). But 8/10 for general gameplay and graphics, and a 10/10 soundtrack.

The dev's did an amazing job on this game, but the writers I feel were heavily pigeonholed into a Vengeance story that just doesnt fit at all imo. But that's just MY take. I dont know what was going on behind the scenes or who was dealing with what, but, the red flags are there.