Why Abby Is So Controversial on The Last of Us

WI need to talk about Abby. The kind of antagonist in The last of us part II First aroused controversy when the game made its origin in 2020. Abby faces our protagonists Joel and Ellie in a world assaulted by zombies and sculpted in factions at the war of survivors. Before the release of the second season of the television series on April 13, various critics are traveling online again, and they can be difficult to understand if you have not played the game or followed the chatter around it.

Let’s eliminate that: some players hate Abby, and The last of us II Overall, for fanatical reasons. A toxic fans subset opposed the following before its release: Teasers and LEVING from the game confirmed that Ellie is gay (a plot Line approached in the first match), that the main antagonist Abby was a woman who challenged female body types generally seen in Video games, and that there would be a trans character in the game. All these character traits are quite radical for AAA games.

Then there were complaints about Abby based on history and character. At a basic level, players would also sail in the game in part II Not like Joel, the main playable character in the first entry, but like Ellie and Abby. This alone was a big change because many players had become emotionally attached to Joel. It is difficult to explain the challenge by forcing players to play as (and implicitly sympathize with) Abby without spoiling the intrigue of the game.

But people felt so passionate about Abby that the actor who expressed and provided Abby’s motion capture performance for the game treated significant harassment and death threats not only against her, but on her son. While season 2 of the HBO adaptation is approaching, here is everything you need to know about the controversy around Abby. Spoilers for The last of us part II– both the game and the television show,

The reason for the spoiler-y Abby intrigue is so controversial

Here is a big spoiler for the start of The last of us Season 2. At the start of the match, Abby kills Joel – Brutally – like Ellie looks. Abby has his reasons. Joel, you will remember, loses his biological daughter at the start of the pandemic. He then bank Ellie, an orphan with immunity to the bites of zombies, from Boston to Seattle in search of doctors who work for a rebellious group called the fireflies. They think they can use Ellie to create a remedy.

But after a long and dangerous journey through the United States, Joel arrives in Seattle to discover that fireflies will have to kill Ellie to extract what they need to create a vaccine. Joel refuses to let his daughter of substitution die and leaves in a madness of killing in the hospital. It is both a heroic moment of paternal protection and brutal act of total selfishness.

Abby is the daughter of the doctor who was to operate on Ellie but that Joel fired on an empty point when Ellie was unconscious on the operating table. Abby’s friends are family members of other fireflies killed by Joel. They therefore swear to track Joel and make him pay not only to kill their parents, but by eliminating the last hope of humanity for a remedy.

Abby Killing Joel is a simple act of revenge. But violence, as The last of us II teaches us, generates violence … which generates violence … which generates violence. Ellie, predictable, seeks revenge against Abby. But unlike Abby, who spared the life of the brother of Ellie and Joel, Tommy, Ellie hurts everyone that Abby has ever loved.

The game forces you to play as Abby, the ostensible antagonist of history, as well as Ellie, our hero of the first game which descends into a sometimes monstrous figure in its quest. The game complicates our perceptions of the hero and the villain, pushing beyond even the concept of anti-hero when you engage acts of pure and simple atrocity while playing like these two characters.

Even before knowing more about Abby’s background frame, his actions are objectively understandable, if not tolerated. However, many fans hated playing the game as Abby, the person who kills their beloved Joel. Frankly, I did it at the beginning. Halfway, I was not particularly impatient to play as an Ellie. Burning Hate strips the two women of their humanity. But that’s the point. The characters scream in torture them and kill them. The usual thrill of a boss fight is completely undermined by empathy that you possibly Develop for the two characters. It is difficult to think of another game that faces players so daring to their own appetite for violence.

Abby is an imposing figure in the game, large with large shoulders and huge muscles, as you might see on a professional wrestler. It is rare to see a female character like this in a game, although of course in a post-apocalyptic world where a hand-to-hand combat with zombies and humans is a daily event, it might not seem so strange.

Abby is also designed in conscious contrast with the slight but rapid Ellie, which must often use stealth and mind to dominate its enemies. “In the game, you have to play the two characters [Ellie and Abby] And we need them to play differently “,” Neil Druckmann, the creator of the two games and co-creator of the show, recently said Weekly entertainment. “We needed Ellie to feel smaller and in a way to maneuver, and Abby was supposed to play more like Joel in that she is almost like a brute in the way she can physically mistreat certain things.”

But when Booksmart ‘S Kaitlyn Dever, an actor who is physically similar to the actor of Ellie Bella Ramsey – so much so that years ago, she was considered the role of Ellie – was launched as Abby, people who celebrated Abby’s physics in the game wondered why the spectacle decided to present someone with a type of body that we see on the screen all the time. “It does not play such an important role in this version of history because there is not as much violent action for a while at one point,” said Druckmann in the same interview. He then praised the performance of Dever. “We need someone to really capture the essence of these characters … We don’t appreciate it,” do they look like the character exactly with their eyebrows or their nose or their body? ” At any rate.