I enjoyed her fight with Ellie. She was totally justified in killing Joel after what he did in the first game. Actions have consequences after all! And she also had the best boss battle in the game.

But anyway, Joel was selfish by killing humanity's only chance of a cure. Then, he got all upset when Ellie learned the truth (which he kept on lying to her until he got caught). I know that gamers love Joel and Ellie, but all of the characters in the Last of Us (Part 1 and 2) are shitty folks. Besides the doggy.

The Fireflies were always coded as a power-hungry untrustworthy and dubious milita group. You aren't supposed to trust them in TLOU for a reason.

While that is true, we can't ignore that Abby's dad was a literal no-name NPC until TLOU2 and how we don't see the WLF gang anywhere in the entire complex in the first TLOU. It honestly feels like a contrived reason just to have Joel killed off and to use his death so they could make a sequel.

Joel also acts entirely out of character to get to the spot where he could get ambushed and murdered in such a unconvincing way.

If Abby had been solely playable and established it would've played better narratively imo. The way the opening hours play out are choppy as shit because it bounces between Ellie and Abby but doesn't really establish Abby as a character despite clearly the game wanting her to be the secondary protagonist. This creates a weird disconnect where you get the tutorial for healing as Abby then the exact same tutorial for healing as Ellie like twenty minutes later, and Abby's story is incredibly coincidental to the point where it borders on the absurd.

If the game had spent the opening, say, two hours establishing Abby and her rapport with Owen and the WLF crew she's with, maybe have them setting up in the house, then Abby ingratiates herself with Jackson (thus serving as a way to do tutorials - maybe to gain 'trust' or whatever she crafts things, for example) and eventually meets Joel. Maybe he draws the short straw and has to take this new girl on a route tour or whatever, they get to talking, establishing rapport, getting along, and Salt Lake City is mentioned and Abby adds two and two together, realizes this is the dude, springs the trap and takes him back to the house.

Then you can have the Ellie/Jesse/Dina stuff play out pretty normally, though maybe with a bit more combat encounters for you to apply your tutorial knowledge (and to show that Ellie is older and more experienced now) with the only difference being it's Joel and "the new girl" who didn't report in.

Now Abby at least feels like a character and her motivations can be unraveled while Ellie goes on her revenge quest.

I dunno, I'm not much beyond the courthouse but I feel like a huge sin on the narrative isn't so much that Joel died but how poorly it was built up. If players were given time to play as Abby and get to know her a little bit, the sudden betrayal might've hit way harder.

It's because he got comfortable after living in Jackson for several years. Plus, Abby helped him and Tommy out while a horde was on their asses. And the horde didn't give them much time to question this stranger unless they wanted to be eaten.

Because it doesn't. He still willingly put himself in danger doing routes, clearing out hordes, searching for supplies with Tommy, Ellie, etc. as seen and told throughout the game, like when Ellie and him got jumped by a Bloater in a flashback (same flashback where he has Ellie put on a gas mask when they encounter spores in case someone sees them). Or the museum flashback where he forced open a locked door with brute force and drew his gun because he thought Ellie was in danger upon hearing a loud crashing sound. But yeah, the few years at Jackson made him "comfortable" and "soft" despite having done dirty work as a smuggler and being ready for anything in a post-apocalyptic world for twenty plus years by then apparently.