No, I think he wanted to just make people miserable since he's a spiteful cunt with a rape and sadism fetish. He's only panicking now because he realizes this game has an extremely good chance of killing his career and himself being mocked to death.
The problem is you can't force people to play as her. You can't force your audience through the rest of the story. Its not like Kojima where he switched out characters, but Snake was alive and you were curious to see where it goes. If I hate it, I can stop playing. Fuck, I can return it or charge it back if I feel like I was swindled.
The weird thing is that you could STILL set up Abby as a "protagonist" here by having her group kill Joel before she gets a chance to tell them that he saved her life and changed her mind or at least "life for a life" or something. Hell, you could still injure the guy and say that you are hurting him but not killing him because Joel saved her.
NOPE.
That's the way it should be written, a TRAGEDY. Joel saves Abby, and she realizes that things are way more complicated and Joel isn't a bad man. Maybe she's been only seeing it from one side. She wants to have an honest discussion with him, because she's built him up as this monster her entire life and sees the man for who he is. Caring father to Ellie, willing to risk his life to save strangers. Maybe he even hints that he knows she might want to kill him, but straight up rescues her anyway. Then her group of Fireflies really doesn't care and tortures and kills Joel. They don't care that he's a good person or saved her life. They just want straight revenge, continue their delusional quest to kill Ellie and don't really care about Abby and use her revenge to their advantage.
Then Abby is just miserable through the entire game, a reluctant antagonist for Ellie. Abby, who realizes her quest for vengeance was one of understanding, which is now forever broken, because she can't even talk with Joel to find out why her father died, even though she no longer wanted to kill him. All that training, that dedication, wasted. There's nothing left for her. Abby's allies just break her. You could basically have her be on a collision course with Ellie even though she doesn't want to be: "This is the path we're set upon. I wish I could change it, I really do. But I can't. Fate is like that sometimes. I've got nothing left in me anymore. If my death will satisfy you, I accept it. I understand it. Part of me even wants it. But I can't just give you my life. Just like your father (Joel) wouldn't want you to give up your life freely, mine wouldn't either. I owe him that much."
Then you can fight and decide if Ellie will kill this poor, broken person or leave her alive, to try and find some meaning in her shattered existence. Abby herself should be a tragic figure. Let her be betrayed by her allies, used to kill an enemy of the Fireflies who wanted to inherit the cause of slicing open Ellie's skull in their delusional quest.
There's a GOOD story here. Druckman is too shit of a writer to find it.
You could also go this route:
Hell, you could even do the revenge plot then with Abby and Ellie teaming together to stop them because (1) they share a bond over their dead fathers, (2) Abby feeling guilt remorse as you said, and (3) since Abby actually knows who and where these people are it's not just Ellie going in blind; Ellie knows what she's up against AND has a competent non-pregnant partner.
I spent literally 2 minutes thinking of this.
Its actually not hard. But Druckman is a fucking idiot and thinks he's smarter than he is.
B-but you don't understand the deep themes and important conversations that the game is starting!
Oh yeah, violence is bad. Real tough message.
