Well he made sure he wouldnt have much competition...

That is a way of looking at it kkkkk

I dunno. The worst thing that happens to Abby is being captured by those bastards at the end(can't remember the name of their group). But that didn't really fee like it had anything to do with her revenge. I think, even if Ellie were totally out of the picture, Abby still would've ended up helping Lev. With the all out war going on, she still would've en ostracized and had no choice but to go looking for the fireflies anyway. Really, if anything, killing Joel saved her life in the end. If she hadn't taken her vengeance, Ellie never would have been there to cut her down from that poll. It just feels like everything that happened to her was just a result of the messed up world they live in. Revenge didn't require much sacrifice on her part outside of maybe damaging her relationship with Owen and his girl.

I can see the parallels between Abby and Joel, but I guess my question is....why? We were dragged away from our queest as Ellie to go on this 10 hour journey with Abby, retreading some of the story beats that were handled in the first game, but what was the point of it in the grand scheme of things? Neil Druckmann and co. obviously thought it was necessary to get their point across, but so much of how it was handled makes me wonder what that point was at all.

And yes, I think that Ellie would have been truly lost if she'd gone through with killing Abby. I agree with you on the ambiguity of the ending. It leaves us with some hope for Ellie. That said, I really don't want there to be a sequel. I felt the same way about the first game. The end was sort of ambiguous, but i was happy with it. I wanted Ellie and Joel's futures to be left to our imaginations. As it is, Naughty Dog managed to make a quality sequel that builds on the events of the first game, but, in the context of the first game, I still don't feel like this sequel had to be made, and i really don't think there needs to be a third one -- especially if another sequel means that they'll have to find a way to throw Ellie back into the violence that we saw in this game.

Maybe a short DLC epilogue would be okay.

Feels like the writers for this game started backwards when writing a story: a bloated cast dictated the story rather than the story dictate the cast.

Joel and Ellie, the heart and soul of the first game, should have been the focus but they weren't: says a lot when for many, the best parts were the Joel and Ellie portions.

Instead Abby has to be half of this game and all these other cast members have to be stuffed into the game in some way making the game feel overly long for some.

I've seen people put up videos on Sekiro showing similar stuff where enemies just don't react. It happens in all stealth games every once in a while. Also, I'm not sure what difficulty level Jim was playing on. Could have been easy mode for all I know.

Your weird choice of difficulty settings probably isn't the best way to play the game. Putting materials on moderate for example is going to cause stuff to rain down on you so much that it ruins the survival horror aspect of the game. I don't see how you died to jump scares, unless you never topped off your HP bar.

My scale goes from a 6 to a 10, for the most part. If I ever actually rated a game a 5/10, it would have to be one of the worst games I ever played. I'm about a quarter of the way through my second playthrough. Overall I think I'd give it an 8.5 now. The Jackson parts are way too slow the second time around. I don't like the scavenger hunt collectibles aspect of the Trophies. I don't like how the game has sections where you are locked in, and can't go back. Like when you cross a certain section with your horse, and a cutscene initiates, and there's no going back to the area you were exploring. You're now locked into going forward. I hate that, because it's do disruptive to gameplay. Opening cuboards and drawers takes too long too.

Since you rate on a 1-10 scale, and I rate on a 6-10 scale, I think we are more in agreement, than disagreement. Since a 5/10 is average/mediocre for you, converted to my scale average/mediocre would be a 7/10. Likewise, your 7/10 score would translate a little higher on my scoring scale.

Ok so I've been playing as abby for a couple hours, and you know I gotta agree.
The story would have worked better if right after Nora, you switched to abby. Would have been much more powerful to know that the next time you kill someone as Ellie, you're inevitably going to see how they were as a person.
Other than that, is Abby the reason people are talking about trans characters?

Abby is a woman. She's just built like a someone on roids :P

It was initially before the game came out I think, but its mostly about Lev I believe. I didnt even know. I was unsure at times what he was while playing it, but I never thought of trans.

Err... Abby lost her father when she was a teenager, and then lost all of her friends by Ellie's hand (after she made the mistake of sparing Ellie's life).
Ellie lost only two friends in this process (Yes, I know Joel was like a father to her and all that, but he was not her actual father).

Nope, there is a trans char but won't spoil it for you.