TLOU2 is more complex than “revenge bad”

I will never understand people who say the point of the game is just “revenge bad”.

The point is that Ellie can’t fill this void in her soul by killing Abby. It’s not that she wants revenge for its own sake, it’s that she wants to purge herself of the guilt she feels for pushing Joel away. She thinks that the only way to come to terms with his death is to kill the person who did it. The way you guys sometimes talk about this game it’s like each kill is one step closer to the 100% revenge meter and she stopped at 99%. That’s just not true. None of the other kills helped her get any closure, or even really affected her (until Owen and Mel), but she ignored that fact because she thought killing Abby would be more satisfying and mean something. When she finally comes to the moment of closure, where she almost kills Abby, she stops not because she morally feels wrong about it, but because it wasn’t going to fix her.

Revenge isn’t bad because it perpetuates the circle of violence. That never stops. It is beyond any one person’s ability to stop. Revenge is bad because it doesn’t fill the hole left behind by loss.