Anyone else think the story should have ended at the farm? That would have been a better ending imo to finish the game on. The epilogue felt long and drawn out by that time.

Not a big complaint though.. since we got more game time, and this will be the last ND game we're gonna get for years :P

My problem with your argument is that you're simply exerting your opinion as the final word.

It's odd how people can defend Joel becoming morally ambiguous after going through apocalypse, but can't allow a hint of understanding that he also may have softened. Even if he is the exact same Joel from 4 years prior, we never have evidence of Joel being difficult to convince. Despite everyone's referencing of Henry and Sam, it literally took 1 minute for Joel to vet Henry, a person who ambushed them. Ellie offers to join up, Joel rebuts, and then Henry says "we have a hideout, we can rest up there"......and Joel says "alright, take us there".

Or consider this, Joel grew this town from 20 to 400 in 4 years. That means over 300 strangers and wanderers and survivors. Given Joel's standing in the community, it's not hard to imagine that he brought a major chunk of those people in from the wilderness. Sure he may have vetted them all in some super cautious way, but like I said, we have no evidence of that. On top of which, even the size of the town and the love and respect overly displayed towards Joel would serve as positive reinforcement to a "gather and grow" mentality, so perhaps in 4 years his priorities have changed.

But all of this is irrelevant in the long run, I could list myriad reasons. I never even considered Joel to have made some mistake because like I said earlier, these people wouldn't even have killed him before learning his name. I've even beaten TLOU a dozen times, and played it on stream twice the week before part 2 came out. To me, nothing felt out of place about him going to Abby's hideout.

I feel that all you really wanted in the story was a definitive reason as to how he would end up in that situation, but even if the writers came out and gave you the explanation and background or put it in the game as DLC, would you even be able to accept it? 

@dante
The more I play it with the flashbacks the more Im starting to see hints that it might go deeper. Like, there is something happening in Joel's brain. He and Ellie are at odds. She knows he lied, and seems like she hates him. And his personality is looking pretty desperate.
I wouldn't put it past them that that the entire thing happened bc Joel started to hate himself and was becoming reckless with his life.

Also I heard something interesting today that in the death scene, it was originally shot with Joel saying Sarah's name right before he dies. 

Are we considering the Santa Barbara entirely as epilogue? It kinda make sense, Ellie couldn`t release herself from the bad feelings so it needed a little more on the story before she was able to.

It's weird because Ellie looked happy on a surface level. But the whole PTSD thing could have been avoided and she could have been happy living out in the farm. Instead of again going an finishing her destructive path of vengeance and possibly ending up alone.

Yeah, I think I was just ready to put the controller down at that point. It would have been a satisfying enough of a conclusion for me. Think I just felt the game was dragging its feet since i was over 20ish hours of game time. Yeah I probably wouldn't have wanted it completely cut out, but maybe shortened a bit and show some some cut-scenes to fill in the blanks for the ending would have done me.

"Give your lecture and finish it already".

That's the line I keep coming back to. Almost feels like he wanted to die