3 Changes I Would Make to the Last of Us Part 2 WITHOUT Changing the Story

[Winter]

Change Number One, Have Ellie's story and Abby's be two Separate Campaigns.

This one We're going to take a page out of NieR: Automata's book and have it were the game has 3 separate Campaigns. The first is Ellie's and is all about her quest for Revenge while the second is about Abby's quest for redemption. Ellie's campaign ends with her deciding to give up on her quest for revenge after she kills Mel and Owen but before Abby shows up. After finishing it we unlock the second campaign where we see things from Abby's story that plays out the same and ends with the boss fight with Ellie.

After finishing both campaigns a 3d Campaign is unlocked and this one is actually an extension of the games 3d act. Instead of being just 3 hours long it's instead 10 hours like with the other 2 campaigns and jumps between Ellie and Abby Equally. It does a number of things like setting up the idea that Ellie would let Abby go.

This would help to fix the pacing issue of TLOU2 while still having it where, if you want the full game you HAVE to play as a character who've grown to hate and see things from her point of view. You get the same result but the method of it would likely make the game a LOT less annoying to play.

Change Number Two: All three campaigns are played in Chronological order.

This is to help give fans of the first game as much time with Joel as possible, turning the flashbacks of the game into the game's opening tutorial and would help to make Joel's death all the more shocking. For fans you get what you want for at least 2 hours, more Joel and Ellie and for new comers they get a chance to get to know Joel before his death which, you know, is kinda needed to help them get invested into wanting to avenge him?

Same thing goes for Abby's story, having her story take place in Chronological order. We see her bonding with her father, we see her relationship with Worst Love Interest of the Decade Owen. And instead of playing as Abby in Ellie's part of the story we instead don't learn how she found Joel UNTIL we play in her Campaign.

This would also help with the pacing issue and help to make Abby a LOT more sympathetic WHILE Still retaining what made so many players hate her at the start of the game. You get all the needed context before she goes to kill Joel while still needing to finish Ellie's side of the story in order to learn all of this.

Also, make Joel a boss fight for Abby so we see him go down swinging instead of getting taken by surprise so his death feels more earned.

The 3d and final Change and this ones rather important: Make Abby Marlene's daughter instead of the surgeon's

Marlene got way more character development so Abby being her daughter would've made her more sympathetic, and Joel killing her was less justified as Abby's father refused to put down his scalpel so his death could be argued as self-defense somewhat, but Joel killed Marlene just on the off-chance that she might go after him so it would've been very fitting if in trying to prevent someone from coming after him by killing her, he in fact succeeded in ensuring someone would come after him.

And there you have it, three changes that wouldn't change the story and still convey what Drunkmann wanted to say. Fans of the game get to keep the story they enjoy, people who don't like it can just stop playing after Ellie's campaign and the games pacing issues are taken out of the equation.

NieR: Automata did this, other games have done this, there is no reason TLOU2 couldn't have done this.

[CharlesPhipps]

I think it should have opened with us as Abby personally and let us see Joel kill her father as well as friends.