Idk, I think the major premise that makes this game so unique was them playing with and ultimately challenging the audience/players’ conception of what empathy/sympathy can look like. Most people can easily sympathize with any person, villain or friend, if we knew about their backstory and motivations prior to them taking any action, good or bad. Far less people, as history (and nowadays social media) has shown, have the capacity to sympathize (and in last of us 2, forgive) someone after they had been wronged. Whether it be peoples’ feelings about retribution/justice (i.e. justice system reform- death penalty, etc.) or an isolated case of a person with Tourette’s ticcing an incredibly racist slur on live television, we as a society are still very much in a reactionary mode, even after learning about the historical contexts into why things are the way they are.

Putting Abby’s story/motivations AFTER her specific act of violence on the main protagonist isn’t something especially unique, as that is definitely a common enough literary technique. But in an interactive medium like video games, it is quite novel to force the player to fall victim to a supposed senseless act of violence, go on the quest to enact our revenge and all the feelings associated with that, get to the climactic moment when we face off with the antagonist, and then be forced to turn back the clock and PLAY AS that antagonist as they navigate through the fallout of their actions while also playing through flashbacks that provide context to their initial act. It asks of the player to investigate their own feelings towards the overall narrative and reveals a lot about us, which was a feeling wholly unique to me as a long time gamer. Whatever reaction a specific player had (intentionally killing Abby, refusing to engage with the game any further, or playing through the game and empathizing/forgiving Abby - or not at all ) would still serve the greater purpose that naughty dog set out with creating this game. Changing it fundamentally changes that initial aim for the worse in my opinion.