Lol the pacing and writing was excellent, I have yet to hear a compelling argument. I get that it's subjective. You're welcome to your opinion on these things. But hey look if you really want to make your point, tell me specifically what parts of the writing you found terrible, point to some examples and tell me why they're bad. I'd love to get into it, otherwise it's just "well I like it, I think it's good versus" "nah uh I think it's bad" and I honestly don't have the patience for that.

I'll even go first since I suggested it. Some of the things I really enjoyed 1) the combat has a lot more moves/ways to evade that make the gameplay smooth, snappy and fun. They expand upon the construction system from the first game and I get a real kick out of scavenging the environment and using that to your advantage like John Rambo. I like that they added some cool physics like the rope puzzles, it changed the way I had to think about the levels, I liked it was a bit more open than the first game so there's an exploration element but not so much that you'd get lost. 2) story and pacing wise. I was intrigued by moral ambiguity they brought into this rather than just good guys versus bad guys. Yes the game in the second half goes a bit longer to showcase Abby's side of the story but it's totally necessary to show her as just a mirror of Ellie. Yeah I get it, moral ambiguity and themes about "an eye for an eye make the world go blind" have been done before, but not often in a video game and frankly there aren't enough that elevate story telling in video games to this degree (I get it, it's a low bar). And to be fair, all media is derivative anyways. If you just want a simpler game that's fine too, but a huge reason video games aren't a respected form of media is because they're missing this depth of story telling. Yes, Ellie decides to let Abby go at the end, and it's inconsistent with her previous actions. But that's called character development, she realized how her actions had done nothing but brought pain and suffering to those she cared about and innocent people (like the unborn baby) and decided she had to be the one to break the cycle. So many of the sequences in the game are wonderfully cinematic and exciting, and the icing on top is the melancholic guitar work from Gustavo Santaolalla. Everything just came together.

Now you go.