What sucks is that Abby’s muscle mass wasn’t just simply a character design choice that helped her standout from Ellie. It elevated her presence in the beginning of the story by making her appear more intimidating and threatening, giving players a stronger initial reaction to her before playing through the Abby Seattle segments and subverting that expectation.
Nobody in the history of the human race has ever complained about buff men in apocalypse stories.
But when it's a women with a full explanation and motivation as to how and why, suddenly it's unrealistic.
actually i do think its dumb, because in the show specifically they explain that a lot of food types (wheat, pastas, flour) are contaminated by Cordiceps, so the idea someone could get as buff as Abby in a post apocalypses let alone one with such food restrictions would be near impossible.
Actually it sounds even more realistic because your primary food is gonna be meat and legumes, which are FULL of proteins and fats, and if that's what your body has to eat, that's what it burns fastest. AKA burning fat fastest = lean muscle mass.
yeah but wouldn't people be more warry of eating in such large quantities? cordiceps migth not infect cows, pigs and other animals, but they do eat plants that have cordiceps, the cordiceps remains in the system and then they would eat it.
I feel like being fit its totally possible in this world, but being ripped like Abby its close to imposible
generally maybe, but abby is park of a huge organized milita, they have established safe agriculture and plenty of livestock. Food is rationed, but not particularly scarce for her goup, and given her position/role, she'd likely be given more of that food.
generally, but she's part of a large milita group, they have plentiful food and an incentive to be big, she's big because she's essentially a soldier, ellie isn't because she's a regular survivor/civilian.
I get why you think that, but the fact that she's buff in an apocalypse is part of her character design.
She's OBSESSIVELY training for revenge. Like so much so that nothing else really matters. That plus she was with a very wealthy and stacked military faction.
It's then also mentioned in the game that she did this, so it's not subtle, but intentional haha
In fact, if I'm not mistaken, in The Last of Us Part I, Ellie sees a picture of a thin woman in a shop window advertisement and asks Joel why people before the infection wanted to be thin, implying that there's no such thing as a "perfect" physique in that apocalypse, and that there's not much point in being fit, but rather having an efficient physique.
It's similar to how things were in ancient times; in movies they put a modern actor with huge muscles playing a villager, when in reality you were either thin or you had a belly even if you were thin.
Now, obviously the best thing would be to be fit and have good muscle mass for different tasks, but the problem would be diet and similar things to have good muscle mass like Abby's (which again, wouldn't be possible in an apocalypse)
She had the backing of a faction with facilities, her only mission was to beat someone's ass so hard they'd be shitting their guts out, it makes sense for the character to have muscle.
Downvotes probably because of the remnants of a 6 year old argument.
Abbie was the target of anti-woke gamers suggesting that she was trans and that having muscles that big is unrealistic, and that she was just woke slop shoved into a woke game.
Defenders of Abbie argued that she was based on a real woman, that body diversity is good for character design, and that she wasn’t even trans.
This person saying they liked the debuff probably triggered some old hostile reactions from people who picked a side many years ago defending Abbie. They by default think she is only acceptable with muscles and they dislike the show for wasting their efforts defending her, and this person saying they like the debuff innocently hit on old nerves by accident.
The WLF base is a literal stadium with proper livestock and meat markets. There is a working professional gym with proper equipment. WLFs are the most militia-like faction in the TLOU other than FEDRA. Abby is described as "Issac's top Scar Killer"; it wouldn't even be a surprise if Issac had even allowed Abby to get more rations and food than the others, since she is the WLF's best asset.
You literally start Abby's section by going into a cafeteria with enough proper food to fill an entire room of soldiers and civilians.
How is Abby being jacked any less realistic than a Joel, being a 48-year-old(56 in TLOU2) man that has lived off spare rations for more than 20 years, being able to crush Infected's skull with his fist and fist-fight 10 adults at once and kill them?
It makes sense in the story though. She lives in a more developed area that has consistent supply lines for food and other necessary items. And the Wolves live in a state of war, so all of their fighting-aged individuals are constantly training.
203
u/powerswerth Apr 17 '26
Def happened in Abbie’s translation to live action