[codynw]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

So, after thinking about it, here's how I would have written this game, if they wanted to do more or less the same thematically.

Spoiler!

Open the game with the same thing - Joel tells Tommy the truth, ride through jackson, goes to see Ellie, promises to teach her guitar.

Then it's all Abby all the time. We get no indication about why we've switched to Abby, or her relationship to Joel, we're just playing as her through a campaign that is based on the Wolves' losing struggle against the Scars. Throughout these chapters the scars will be protrayed as an insane cult, much as they initially were in the real game. This will allow the player to get to know the "Salt Lake" crew in a setting where they're completely sympathetic. Hopefully make Owen a bit less of a ######bag, or at least a bit more of a lovable ######bag, a la Drake. Show, instead of telling us, Mel's general fragility, so we can recoil more at her reaction to what they're going to do. Throughout this chapter, Joel is never mentioned by name, but more slightly hinted at as someone who the crew is looking for for "what he did", but always in a way as to suggest first and foremost that they're talking about one of the Scars. You can say they're former fireflies, and that the fireflies got wiped out and there are rumours about other Firefly cells, but just in a sort of vague way. Incidentally, this also allows us to get to know Isaac, who is portrayed as a beleaguered leader who has lost his family to his enemy, who wishes he could just have a peace pact but knows it failed before and that his enemy isn't the sort that listens to reason. These are the good guys.

In between each of these chapters, we get the flashbacks with Ellie and Joel (the museum, the search for the strings, and Ellie finding out about what Joel did in Salt Lake), plus some of the end game stuff - the scene with Seth, and the follow up with Joel on the deck where Ellie says she wants to try to forgive him. You also get the flashbacks that show Abbey's relationship with Owen, starting at the ferris wheel and moving into the aquarium.

Then they find out that the guy they've been after is "out east". I don't even know if the trip to Wyoming (which shouldn't be explicitly where they're going) needs to be a chapter or cutscenes, but when you get to the snowstorm part with Abbey, she encounters four people in snow goggles and heavy coats, so you can't see that it's Joel, Tommy and two other people (who die as they're fleeing the infected), and their coats / scarves / whatever muffle their voices. Things cut from Abby just as they enter the lodge..... and go to the beginning of Ellie's story.

Now you get Ellie finding the lodge and walking in them killing Joel. The "it's like you've heard of us or something" scene happens immediately before so as not to give too much time to the dread of what's about to happen. You now get the flashback to young Abbey and her dad at the zoo, and the reveal of St. Mercy's.

Then Ellie's revenge plot plays out as usual - although preferably Day 1 and Day 2 can be a bit shorter by cutting off at least one or two stages of "elude or kill the bad guys". Hopefully, having this here will diminish gamer fatigue, because there's some excitement to getting to play as Ellie finally. The big change is that all the PTSD scenes of her getting flashbacks to Joel's death happen while you're playing through it, not in the end game. This should give a much more palpable sense that Ellie is losing it, and also, because you've actually been given a reason to give a #### about the people you're torturing and murdering, make it a much more conflicted task for the player. The flashbacks during this - since all the Ellie / Joel stuff was shown during Abbey's first chapter - are flashbacks to scenes in the hospital involving Marlene and Abbey's dad, including the scenes from the real game about their conflict leading to the operation on Ellie that Joel stopped. Also, the Wolves are treated more sympathetically as you kill them - pleading for their lives and trying to justify themselves to Ellie as she cuts into them, or beats them with a pipe, and so on. I'm fine with this being super uncomfortable.

The second half of the real game - all the stuff with Abby and the Scars - is much shorter and does not involve the trip back to the hospital or climbing over buildings, or her detour to have sex with Owen. She's looking for Owen, she gets caught, hanged, Lev and Yara save her, she doesn't leave them, they spend far less time at the aquarium and both Yara and Lev agree that they have to go save their mom upon learning that the Wolves are going to attack the island. All of that plays out as before. The part on the Scar island plays more into "these people are just living their lives and the wolves are about to commit genocide", culminating with a scene where Isaac is clearly the bad guy, ordering the killing of unarmed prisoners.

Then we go back to the standoff at the theatre. At this point, the game steals from Nier Automata - make your choice, Ellie or Abbey. If you pick Ellie and win, she kills Abbey, brutally, and that's the end of the game - we get cutscenes from Ellie and Dina at the farm, exactly the same, except this time her PTSD episodes don't revolve around seeing Joel die anymore, they revolve around what she did to Nora, Mel, Owen, Abbey. The implication is that she's haunted and bitter and eventually leaves Dina because she can't look at her anymore. That's the end of Ellie's story, and it's a clearly bad one. You want justice for Joel? You can have it, but you're supposed to hate what it does to Ellie.

If you pick Abbey, she lets Ellie and Dina live. You get the first scene on the farm with Ellie and Dina with the sheep and the barn, but the PSTD episode is less severe than in the real game. Dina comforts her, they go back inside, you get a closing scene with the kitchen, and the implication is that Ellie is going to live happily ever after with Dina, haunted by what she's done, but able to cope with the support of her family. Then you get to do the mini-chapter with Abbey and Lev in Santa Barbara. The game closes on the scene where they're talking on the radio. I'm not really convinced if it just should just end with the other end of the line making a noise that sounds like, but isn't clearly, a voice, or if it ends with the other side picking up and saying "hello?", or if the whole conversation should play out, confirming that there are still fireflies. I tend to think the latter, but it all works.

Roll credits. That's the end. No slavers or whatever. You could do something like that for a DLC, but you'd play as Abby.

I'm pretty confident that that would have fixed this game completely. It adds a big, brand new chunk in the beginning half of the game, but shortens the rest and removes the final chapter more or less completely. It gives the player choice and consequences, and creates greater stakes. The ending now makes sense in light of what the game is, apparently, trying to convey. It works both as a straight ending if there is no LOU III, and if there is, well, really easy to pick up where we left off with two different stories, "what happened to Abbey and Lev" and "What happened to Ellie". (Abbey's ending would be the canon).

I'm sure there are other ways you could re-write this and fix it, but this one took less than 24 hours to occur to me and I don't do this for a living. Surely Druckmann and co. could have done better with 7 years to work on it. I dunno.

Yea something like this would have made the game so much better. I didn't hate the events of the game, just the way they told it could have been better.

Spoiler!

Although I'd skip the choice at the end, that's not Naughty Dog's style. Just have it end similar, with both staying alive and Ellie getting a "happy" ending on the farm, and Abby going off to find the Fireflies with Lev.

I got the platinum trophy today, and unlike the first game, I probably won't go back to this one. It's not offensively bad like some people seem to think, but nothing I need to replay.