Ellie has Abby. She can end it. The survival of one of them will feel like a betrayal of something — of Joel, of the purpose, of the version of herself that left Jackson certain of what this was for. The game sits here for a long time, in the space before the choice is made, because the choice is not obvious and the game refuses to pretend it is.

The betrayal surviving implies is not of the dead. The dead are past betrayal. It is of the self that needed the purpose to keep moving, the self that organized an entire identity around the pursuit and now has to exist without it. Surviving past the reason for surviving is its own kind of loss.