You do not take a character, who could sense when someone was lying and trying to ambush in the first game, and allow him to immediately trust a new person and a random group of people, all the while Tommy is going out and giving out names, like they don't know they've been murdering people to survive over 20 years. It's so foolish and comical that it's not even realistic by any stretch of the imagination. If you want to kill Joel so badly, and bring out the rage of the player to go after Abby you have to set-up Joel as being a competent, worthwhile character. He never would have done that in the first game, or he wouldn't have survived. How you handle the character is important.
Not to mention, the gameplay is suck in 2013. Outside of the graphics, there is nothing special about this game that couldn't have been done on PS3. Gameplay is almost exactly the same, with some minor rope climbing added. But what is this game doing outside of graphics that shows it's evolved over a 7 year period?
The ending of the game was a let down too. All that set-up, and Ellie is going around killing people without mercy, yet the ONE person the player WANTS to kill, and Ellie lets her go free? Abby would have died anyway. She was captured and Ellie saved her (what?) After Tommy asked her to leave Dena and the baby and go out and kill, or something? I'm foggy with the details. but Ellie's story was done. She had no reason to leave that house, and had she not, Abby would have died anyway. Too see her freed, and Ellie without a family, for no reason, was onr horrible let-down in the story out of many. It most definitely was not game of the generation, or game of the year, by a long shot, and I 100% disagree with your assessment.