Given how he too believes that the people who had complaints about TLOUII were a "minor segment of gamers", I'm not having high hopes for the next part. The only reason the fist part of the show was even watchable is because it was adapting the much better first game (which Druckmann didn't have complete control over).
Speaking of which, while reflecting on the second game and why the whole "revenge and violence is bad" message didn't work out, I didn't come to another realization until I saw how Filmento pointed out that the Origins Wolverine movie failed because it tried to combine three incompatible stories into one, resulting in none of them working. TLOUII suffers pretty much the same problem.
Looking at an overview of the game, you can see that it too wants to tell multiple stories and themes. It's a revenge story where Ellie tracks down Joel's killers and makes them pay for their actions. It's a redemption story where both Ellie and Abby try to become a better people and learns that violence and killing is a a vicious cycle that must be broken. And it's also a story that deals with fallouts and repercussions of one's actions, as seen by how the game infamously treats Joel's character.
Any one of those three stories could've made for a great sequel, and had Druckmann just focused on one of them, I honestly think that the game, while perhaps not perfect, would've been far better and a much more satisfying experience for both the fans and the critics. Heck, the first game itself was laser focused on just one narrative thread (how relationships are tested in dire circumstances and the like), and is why, while I'm not the biggest fan of the game, I can at least accept it as a coherent story with a satisfying through-line, to the point where I can even go so far as to understand why it got such praise from the critics.
But in the sequel, Druckmann seemed to have eyes bigger than his writing skills, and thus tried to combine all three story ideas into the one sequel, which not only resulted in it being much longer than it needed to be, but because they are pretty much incompatible with each other, each of them end up cancelling out the others strengths to the point that none of them work, and the story ends up being a complete mess that can't really decide on a particular theme, because they are in constant conflict with each other.
People say that TLOUII is a revenge story and about the consequences of it, but if it was just that, then I don't think the story would be as sloppy as it is. The real problem is that it's trying to be more. It's a revenge story about killing, along with being a redemption story about not killing, that has been uncomfortably saddled with the burden of also dealing with the idea of consequences for one's actions. And the result is a complete mess.
Why Druckmann decided to try cramming three stories in one I have no idea.
