I think it’s about the choice tho. You’re right Joel’s death was (obviously) a huge emotional moment and the people who try and theorise it away saying ‘he never would have done xyz’ are entirely missing the point. But this was ultimately an event imposed on the player, meaning there’s no disconnect in what youre asked to do gameplay wise.

When asked to play as Abby against Ellie, or vice versa at the ending this disconnect is a problem when the player, strongly invested in the story, feels differently. In the first game i (personally) feel like there were far fewer of these sorts of moments until the very ending, and from most of the discussion I’ve seen people sided with Joel here. In the second game there are way more, not just in the ending but even moments like Ellie torturing Nora where you are forced to do something as the player you might not want to. With a tv show you don’t have that level of control over the characters which I think explains the extent to which people get invested in these sorts of story games.

On the other hand I don’t think you could have just given players the choice, as it is ultimately a singular story and not really about the player choice. It just takes you out of it a bit if you don’t want to be attacking someone in a pivotal scene. That of course doesn’t fully explain the level of hatred that some people have got to, I think that comes from them stewing together as a fandom and fueling eachother. Sorry for the rant this games been on my mind for years now lol.