A lot of the criticism I’ve seen I feel is an over-reaction. You’ve not even seen some of the characters before, let they game actually introduce them and build them up before saying you don’t care about them. That said, it does seem odd that Joel seemingly isn’t a playable character. A lot of it seems to be driven by a negative reaction to Ellie being a lesbian, and calling it pandering - whereas Ellie is actually a great example of a game not pandering this sort of thing. I’ve seen a rumour about Abby’s character though that I’m not sure if it’s true, but it seems to add more fuel to the fire.
Naughty Dog have definitely taken a big risk here, if the stuff about Joel is true I’ll give them props for taking the story in that direction, rather than having a more typical story. It is the sort of one that will invoke a reaction as the fanbase is attached to him.







