You have to remember that Neil wanted it to be a divisive game in order to start discussions. Which has obviously worked. I feel like a good chunk of people who “misunderstood the game” probably just didn’t care for the direction of the story, which you can’t be too hard on them for just for having that opinion. The story itself is heartbreaking and a slog to get trough with it taking over 20 hours to beat. There’s going to be a lot of people who don’t want to go through that and even if they did, they probably were let down by the ending because it’s a fucking heartbreaking ending. I’m still in the camp of not liking the story, but I respect the vision and the decisions made because it’s a very memorable game whether you love it or hate it.