What a great breakdown on your thoughts, thank you for sharing. I’ll admit it’s not a perfect game but I think it worked for me much better than for you. When the game switched to Abby I had this sense that the writers were going to try and make me feel something besides hate/contempt for her and my immediate reaction was “Good fucking luck.”
But it really worked and as the narrative unfolded with Abby I found her to be a very sympathetic character and by the ending I was more worried about her than Ellie.
When I realized this I felt super conflicted because - who didn’t care about Ellie going into Part 2? And I think that message about having empathy for people you hate was such a powerful theme to make a whole game about that I was willing to let a lot of the smaller narrative mistakes go.
Have a good day.
Rock and stone!