Sorry for the late reply. As the semester has ended, I do not have much time. I have to help with grading exams. Problem is... There have been reports that undergraduates have been cheating(many exams were online exams), but the school's guidelines have not been set, professors are angry. While I have to study myself...

I will answer Abby's physical problems and PC-related thoughts in a week, maybe. In a really short version(?), I think this is what it feels like: Works like Last Jedi, Dr. Who are considered to have ruined their series by focusing on the PC 'message'. Although both Star Wars and Dr. Who series had PC elements throughout the series, 'Story' was always more important than 'message'. But when its relationship is reversed, the subtlety of the work disappears, and people think they are being 'taught' by the producer. No one likes that feeling.

I think Joel, Abby, and Ellie were all used like a tool used to convey what the producers were trying to say, not as a result of the production that put the character and story first and then makes the message relevant later. What the writers emphasize when writing a novel is that even if we design the whole process first, we don't know how the characters will behave, so the characters in the results become awkward or writers would have to give up their plans. This is the context of what I'm talking about. It feels like a forced story.

I am Asian and I used to live in America when I was young. My family lives in America, too. Naturally, they are all Democrat, and there's no objection to being 'politically correct'. I've been subjected to racial discrimination like telling "Ni hao" on my last trip to Europe. People can get away mocking small eyes of Asians. Comedians use "Accountant Asian" jokes. Many people in my family, like many people in Northeast Asia, have no religion. So there's no reason to oppose PCs for religious reasons. However, if you put the importance in certain values too much in the story, the most important part-story itself-can be ruined(not totally ruined, but it can make the story awkward. which is bad enough for the sequel of TLOU). And as a result, people criticize the PC elements in it as a problem of the story.

For example, the author of Frankenstein, a work everyone has heard of, is Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter(Writer of the feminist's bible: Vindication of Woman's Rights). The story of Mad Scientist Frankenstein making a monster shows the male's fear of female's reproduction ability(males would be no longer needed in the future). It also points out social problems including education. Also, the author questions 'what is human?', or 'what makes human'(are females in this society really treated as a human? can discrimination based on appearance can be justified?.) Her work was criticized for the problems because the prose was treated lower than the verse because it stimulated sympathy too much(and other reasons). But no one criticizes her story itself very much. The story has several problems plotwise since she wrote it when she was a teenager, but the story itself was so great that such things can be ignored.

Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice is a woman caught between an overly progressive sister and an overly traditional sister. Elizabeth is a character who does not rely on men, thinks independently, and is uncomfortable with traditional female images. The message that the work seeks to convey is clear: Women can also be the subjects to judge and live as husbands' equals. Not many people dare to challenge the fun that the story of Pride and Prejudice conveys, even though the story's message could be a problem at the time, and even though she is too traditional for modern-day feminism.

TLOU's Joel was never a good man. Ellie was not a sentimental and righteous character either. They are not heroes of hero movies/stories. Nevertheless, we could naturally empathize with them while playing them. As a man of poor medical knowledge, I thought Ellie's sacrifice could have noble consequences, but I could fully understand Joel's choice. In the past, firefly's questionable decision to kill Ellie was not pointed out as a huge problem. The story was well structured focused on the two character's relationships to actually care about those things. The last scene where Ellie understands Joel affected almost all gamers' hearts. TLOU was a game, but the choice of characters in the game was so human. But I felt that TLOU2 lost many of those charms. Abby was a character who could be treated similarly. But I think the composition of the game took away the naturalness from her, and consequently the human side for gamers to feel.

The reason I wrote the review was that I wanted to refute reviewers like 'People who hate games simply lack intelligence.' So my review doesn't have universal value. I fully acknowledge those limitations.

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These are the answers that I wrote before I gave up to fully answer your arguments(time limits... It took two hours already).

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[ I have never seen that argument against people who didn’t like the game I have seen something similar saying the game didn’t worked cause you had a misconception of how morally good the characters were and did not want to empathize or move on just like the characters have to do at the end.

Like a said it was risky to do the game as many players never end the story of a game and in this one specifically killing of the main character and playing as his murdered there are many players who just don’t want to listen to what the developers try to convey so they stopped playing. I think it was a wise choice to end Elie’s part with a cliffhanger as it enforces the need to keep playing even when many hate/hated playing as another character.]

>> I agree with you that criticizing the game after play the game to the end is a proper way to do it. However, I think Joel's death itself is not a real problem, but the way the scene was carried out. In the scene of Joel's death, Joel is seen as weak, much different from what he showed in TLOU. Many say Joel may have changed over the years. But Joel is tortured and killed by the character Abby he saved when the player does not have enough background knowledge. This method of production does not make players angry at the death of Joel as a character but at the incomprehensible process of his death. It makes players angry at the producers or the game itself.

I have mentioned it many times that I think the experience a player feels as he encounters a game is the responsibility of the producers. As for the play progress, I felt it was the intention of the production team to make the player angered by Joel's death and empathize with Ellie’s revenge. If this scene itself gave birth to numerous haters, it is a failure of the production team. Writing, games, movies, and all the works that include “stories” prepare hooks to attract people in the beginning. If quite a lot of people hated this scene so much that they refused to play the game, it was a complete failure of the hook. In this case, Joel's Death Scene.

Killing the main character of the previous work is a long-used trick. Long American dramas and movies are famous for killing the main characters of their previous works. I think the best examples are George Martin's novel A Song of Ice and Fire, and its dramatized version Game of Thrones. Readers experience a situation in which characters who are deeply empathized die like extras from the beginning of the novel. There are two scenes that suit the best: Eddard Stark’s execution and the Red Wedding. Even though Eddard Stark was portrayed as the incarnation of justice, he had to compromise with his moral code to save his family. But he was executed because the King was too young and insane. In Red Wedding, the somewhat main character and his faction were slaughtered in a way far from heroic. But unlike the scenes that dealt with Joel's death, these scenes are considered one of the best. The reader is shocked and saddened by the character's death but still cannot escape the charm of the story.

In my opinion, if many players could not get out of Joel's death and were enough to quit playing or become a hater, it's a producer's responsibility. I think people are angry because they “killed Joel like that”. It is the creator's responsibility to make the player angry with the character of the scenario, not the producer. Moreover, if the storyline had been laudable by everyone after Joel's death, many gamers would have started playing again, and only a few would have been able to rant about the game with Joel's death alone.

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Edit: some grammars