Nattens arvinger/Heirs of the Night | A great concept, a little rant.

Yet again, I should have spent the day revising my thesis, instead I binged this entire show.  This rant should be rather small... my time is limited.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

**Warning: The text below might contain spoilers and a fair amount of sarcasm**

**Disclaimer: All of this is purely my personal opinion. That means that it's not worth anything for anyone but me.** 

The concept is this show is great, but it is very clear that the budget was very limited. With a bigger budget this should could be fantastic. And with a bit of better writing as well...

Regarding the budget, I would say, give up on the some special effects and invest more on practical stuff. Most of the special effects and CGI is already sparsely used, for example when some character shapeshifts into some animal, we only see part of the transformation... show us that part once, and then just make the character shapeshift behind something. We have seen it once, we know how it works, we don't need to see it again, save money on that. Save money on the eyes, most of them don't need to be as intense as they were, save money on the magic, it can still be cool, while being less intense. Then invent the "spare" money on practical things, the scenarios,  the character's wardrobe, and so on.

It is clear they the producers tried their best, for that they deserve some praise. The writers, on the other hand... well. Lets just say, that it's not bad... but rather it's mediocre. I think that, even with a limited budget, the series could be a lot better if the writing was improved. There are moments where I had to use extreme suspension of belief... for example, when the heirs are having one of their classes, and people keep sneaking away from class, even worse, sneaking away from the ship! Or when characters talk, fight, scream with each other, on prow of the ship... and no one else on board notices it? Have you seen that ship? No? Look at it!

That's a tiny ship! If someone sneezes on board, everyone knows! So, if you having two characters sharing a secret conversation, or kissing, or whatever, at least stick to the rules that you have already established (more on this next paragraph), and make it so that they do the "secret action" away from other characters! For example, two characters are not supposed to fall in love, and they are literally kissing behind a hanging ragged piece of cloth! And then our main character sees them and tells them to be careful, no one should know that they are in love... bruh, everybody could see them as long as they had eyes!

Now, the ship, I think that it is great that the series managed to get a real replica of a ship to film on. Although, when the ship is sailing, it is clearly not the same ship, probably a miniature or CGI. Take some money out of the magic CGI (make it more practical effects), and please just put some CGI masts on that damn ship. I understand the the replica that you are using doesn't have the top part of the masts but, if you show us the ship sailing with full masts, then at least add those in when the ship is docked... Still on the ship, again due to constraints, it is understandable that the ship is small on the outside, and then it turns out to be huge on the inside. From the inside it appears to be a really big ship, with ample rooms (for a ship), from the outside, well, you can see by the image. Going back to the subject of the secrecy, if you ask the viewer to suspend their beliefs regarding the size of the rooms inside the ship, then use and abuse it! Make those "secret" scenes take place in some cabinet of the ship, or an empty room. Sometimes the ship looks so big that a character can have a secret conversation in a empty room, or have a fight in one part, and no one is around or notices it... and then there are scenes where the characters need two minutes alone, and it seems impossible because the ship is tiny!
Choose one! Either the ship is small, like the viewer sees it, or it is small on the outside and big on the inside! I can't keep changing my suspension of belief every five minutes!

Now a pet peeve, ok the ship probably has some meaning, being named after Dracula's love and etc... but come on... it's 1889! That looks like a XV century ship! You know what kind of ships where put to the sea in 1889? Look:

This is the French cruiser Alger, put to sea in 1889! No wonder the vampires are going extinct! They are ~400 years behind in technology!

Anyway, pet peeve over. :3

Oh, back to special effects, (because it's my rant, I can write in circles as much as I want, no one reads this anyway, muahaha), it must have been a pain, having to film a series about vampires that basically only are active at night, during the day! It led to some really "wacky" and strange effects, where they reduced the lighting of the scene, digitally? Maybe? I dunno, it clearly was obvious that it was all filmed during the day, with some weird filter or something... but I guess it passes. Again, gets a green card due to obviously having a small budget, suspension of disbelief takes care of that.

Ok, moving on to the acting! Some of the actors where children, but they all did a pretty good job overall, by the standards of child actors. The "teenager/young adult" actors vary a bit. The main actor,
Anastasia Martin, does a brilliant job, for me she clearly stood out in relation to the others. The adult cast was pretty good, no complaints there... (Christina Chong please marry me).

I particularly liked that each character maintained a bit of their cultural identity during the series. Lets be honest here, if this was an american series, the characters might have said one or two words in their native language when they first appeared on screen, but then they would switch to english-american with ease. Here each character clearly uses english as their second language as a mean to communicate with others that don't speak the same native tongue.

Finally, the story! I think the idea was brilliant, but it lacked in some key points, where things happen simply to move the plot along, or they happen and make no sense, according to what has been established. A good example is the death of the Condensa, like... she was supposed to be one of the strongest elders, but she gets overpowered at least twice by a single enemy, never giving much resistance, and then lets herself die...? What the hell... the other vampire, that was holding her, had time to run to the shade, and she just stands there, on her knees waiting for the Sun to turn her to dust? Use your legs woman! Move!

The idea of the core of the story being the vampire clans against Dracula seems great (I've done some research and it seems that the series is based on a book/series of books? I don't think they are translated to english at least... maybe with the series they will be translated).

But, the moment I saw the ship, I saw a big missed opportunity to make a series about vampire pirates, of course it could not be set in 1889, but still...

Anyhow, a small problem that I saw with the story was that, basically, every single problem that the characters had, could have been solved with one single action, yet they never do it... and then do it after the main "treat" of the season is dealt with. They have someone trying to steal their crystals, and the "red masks" hunting them, but... dudes, you are on a SHIP! Set sail god dammit! It's a wide world out there, your enemies would have to keep chasing you endlessly! Unless, the characters realize that their ship is more a tub than a ship, compared to other ships of the era, and are scared shirtless of traveling far with it! But they did get from Norway to Italy in that tub... so, why not keep moving?

Maybe they are indeed afraid? In this series, vampires also fear the ocean, they become immobilized in the water, unless they are in the possession of a crystal that allows them to swim. And yet, they decide to stay on a ship? If I commanded the Red Mask, I would just try to intimidate the vampires into setting sail, get any ship 1/3 (or even less) of the size of the Alger, caught the Elizabetha on open waters, fire upon it, and BAM, job done, to the button of the sea with all of your fangs!

Although the Red Masks might not be able to afford a ship of any kind, they seem to struggle financially (since they use all the silver against the vampires, rip) because they use a lot of bows and swords... for 1889 I would expect a lot more revolvers and bolt action rifles... but ok.

Anyway, it's late again, and my brain is shutting down.

The story is set up for a second season, I really hope that they manage to get the funding for it.

Mmmh, lets give it 3.5/5 (with 0.2 for the effort and 0.3 extra for Christina Chong).

"Harry Potter", by J.K. Rowling | School trauma nostalgia.

For a long, long time, I don't really know since when, I've owned a copy of the first Harry Potter book (Portuguese translation). I think someone must have given it to me after I watched the first movie, but I never read it. I remember opening it and starting to read it for school (back then we had to read one book each "period" (trimester?), and then present it to the class), but soon after our Portuguese Language teacher announced that the Harry Potter books where banned, and students could not read those books for their presentations. Not because of "religion" (I read somewhere that in some countries/communities the books are actually banned because of "witchcraft"... silly), but because of the movies, teachers feared that the kids would simply watch the movie(s) and present the story as if they had read the book. In a way it made sense, I can see some people doing that, but at the same time it might have damaged many kid's (including myself) will to read the series. Imagine a kid that didn't really like reading (aka: me), mostly because he was not good at it (dyslexia), and then you don't let him read one of the most popular books of the time, a book that peaked his interest... well guess what that kid (and many others of my class - and probably many more) thought: "Well, reading is a chore... I already have to read one mandatory book each period, plus another book of my choosing. I have this super popular book what I would not mind trying to read, but it as been prohibited. I really don't feel like reading anything else... so... lets not read anything at all." This was me and, along the years, many of my colleagues. Every time someone proposed (we had to ask the teacher if she would accept the book that we choose) a Harry Potter book, the teachers would deny it. Sometimes it was proposed by students that where proposing a book ahead of the movies... but the first movie had done it's damage, all Harry Potter book where banned from presentations during my twelve years of school. It reached a point where all students already knew that it was hopeless, for the last three years of school, only one person attempted to propose one of the books.
I'm not completely blaming it on the teachers, I didn't like reading in general, but now, as an adult, I think that it was wrong for them to prohibit students from using it for their evaluations. The objective of the project was to encourage students to read more. The kids that already liked to read, read the books on their own. Me, and probably other kids that didn't like to read, got discouraged from reading the first book, and so never really got hooked into it, and never had motivation to continue the series. Imagine, if Harry Potter had been allowed, at least some of the kids (that didn't like to read) would have read the first one and liked the story, then would have read the second one, the third and so fourth... 
I am not sure, but I think that it was Harry Potter that started the "trend" of not allowing books, that have been adapted into films/series, as something that students could present for their class.

And all of this could have been solved if the teachers had bothered to actually read the books and see the movies... obviously there are differences! So it would be possible to identify the students that only pretended to read a book, and actually only watched the movie.

I've been out of school for about eight years now (I think), from what I know (from my cousin and friends), the Harry Potter books are now a known "tabu". Everyone knows that the Harry Potter series doesn't count as a "book", because there are movies, and the same applies to all other (well known) book series that where adapted to cinema or television. Of course, not all teachers do this, I have hope that the "new generation" of teachers, that got educated during the ascension of Harry Potter, might now be more tolerant.

But anyway, I was saying something and got lot in my rant again, now I have to scroll up and see what the hell I was saying at the start of all of this. [...] Oh yes, I was ranting about how I got the books. So I owned the first one since... probably 2001 and then, many years later, when the last book came out, someone again offered me (for birthday or christmas) a copy of the last book (also translated in Portuguese). Since then I owned the first and the last books of the series, and never got past the first chapter of the first. Until now.

Usually I prefer to read a book in it's original language (if it's English - I am not fluent in other languages) but, since I already had two of the books in Portuguese, I decided to get the rest of them also in the same language. It has a bit of an investment, buying the remaining five books, so I opted for the Weasley route and got them in second hand (basically all of them never had been read - and the one that did, was in a very good condition).

And so my journey into the Wizarding World began, after disinfecting all the books that arrived in the mail, because Voldemort is child's play, compared to Covid.

**Warning: The text below might contain spoilers and a fair amount of sarcasm**

**Disclaimer: All of this is purely my personal opinion. That means that it's not worth anything for anyone but me.**

Has I was reading the first couple of books, I decided to not write a rant for each book, but rather just writing one rant for the entire series.

The first two books where "ok" for me, I think that I didn't enjoy them as much because they are more appropriate for a middle grade audience. But that also makes them fast reads, so I reached the third book rather quickly, and this was when I really started to enjoy it. Maybe because it was the first book where the theme of the story was not the same as the first book. Lets be honest, the first two books are very similar: Harry goes to school, discovers some strange things with his friends, turns out that Voldemort is behind it all, ruins Voldemort's plans, Gryffindor wins the cup. The third book was the first that did something new, putting Voldemort aside and expanding the story around Sirius.

I have the feeling that J.K. Rowling didn't really plan the entire series from the beginning, and just went along discovery writing. It is not necessarily a bad thing but, I had the impression (especially towards the last two books) that the author tried to "weave" many of the details of the first two books into the main story, in order to keep them more relevant.

But anyway, the Prisoner of Azkaban was the first book where Harry was "less special", and more relatable. Then it kind of dipped into the "Harry is special" trope again in the Goblet of Fire, the main plot felt kind of forced to me. In the end we discover that Voldemort was behind the entire plan, and that getting Harry to the end of the tournament was all his idea. But... like... Dumbledore, the other teachers, and even Harry and his friends feel a bit "dumbed down" in this book. For example, it was obvious that Harry didn't put his name in the Goblet. And the tournament is called "Triwizard Tournament"... TRI... aka three wizards! The fact that there are four is clearly an anomaly, as it is stated by Dumbledore and the other two directors of the competing schools. Obviously they feel that it's unfair that Hogwarts has two students competing, when they can have only one. "Oh but if the Goblet chose his name he now has to participate.", ok yes... but participating is one thing, competing is another! Harry clearly didn't want to take part in the tournament, the other two schools where against it, and everyone admitted that it was an anomaly! Then, why not do the only logical and fair thing available, since some magic from the Goblet compelled Harry to take part in the tasks...

For example, make Harry participate (fulfilling the Goblets demand), but not compete. If his case was an anomaly, against the rules even... why not just make Harry "surrender/give up/retreat" at the beguiling of each task, and award him zero points? He would be technically in the tournament, but would not unbalance the odds of each school and, more importantly, he would be completely safe, focus on his studies, and enjoy the tournament as somewhat of a spectator, like he wanted! And Voldmort would not succeed in is dumb complicated plan, because Harry would put one step in the maze, cast the red sparks in the air immediately, and go back to enjoy watching the final task along with his friends! What the hell was Dumbledore thinking? The man surely would be able to find a way around and trick the Goblet... sigh anyway, moving on. Out of the "non middle grade" books, the Goblet of Fire was my least favorite.

The Order of the Fenix was a fantastic breath of fresh air. Harry goes back to not being "special" ( I mean, he is special, but is not doing something completely out of the ordinary, that has never happened before, etc etc), he is just a teenager in a magical school, having to deal with the imposition of new rules that make no sense for him at all!

Yet again, the series relates well to situations that regular kids experience in school. (Here come the memories again). Back in my 8th or 9th year of shcool, a new rule got implemented that left everyone revolted and confused. To us kids, that new rule made no sense at all, but all the teachers and auxiliaries imposed it eagerly... and still today I don't see much sense to this rule. The rule was regarding footballs inside school. I never liked football, I never played it with my colleagues during the break between classes, but most of my colleagues did and I just stood there watching them play (I was never good at it). For years, almost every day, someone from the class would bring their football to school, we even had a rotation system to known who should bring the ball. We had usually two or three intervals per day. Some of ten minutes, one of twenty. One day, my colleagues where playing (the school had a huge football camp or dirt, at least four classes could be playing a game at the same time), when the gatekeeper came and confiscated all the balls! We didn't knew, but a new rule was now in place - the thing is, no one told the students about the new rule, and the gatekeeper also didn't say a word, just confiscated the balls and went away (now that I think of it... something was up with that man, in all my years there I can hardly recall hearing him say a word). For the following week people continued to bring balls to play, and they continued to be confiscated. Until finally a teacher decided to inform us of the new rule, while asking that we didn't tell anyone that she told us, because "students where supposed to discover the rule by themselves" - thank you Professor Rosa of History... I don't think that it now matters that it was you. :)

So the new rule consisted in: The students must bring their own footballs (and any other balls, we has a basket field as well), but said balls must be delivered directly to an auxiliary, otherwise they will be confiscated. The students can then fill in a form to RENT (yes, pay to play with our own ball) one of their own balls, ONLY during the the 20 minute break. The form could only be requested during said 20 minute interval, and would have to be approved by the teacher in charge of said class, the students would have to pay 20 cents before receiving the blank form. The balls can not leave the school grounds, and must be returned before the bell rings for the end of the 20 minute break. If it is returned after the ring of the bell, said student will be prohibited from renting any more balls until the end of the school year. And, the final touch, even after receiving the fully signed paper form, it is up to the responsible auxiliary to decide if the ball should be given to the student or not.

So, the school had already confiscated/stolen a ton a balls during a week, any new balls coming win would suffer the same fate. Students could not request a ball for the breaks of 10 minutes, only for the one of 20 minutes. When the bell rang for the break, one student would have to run from class to the teacher's pavilion, get in line if there where others trying to buy the paper form to request a ball, PAY 20 cents, fill in the form, ask to talk with the teacher responsible for their class (that might or not be there... or sometimes just where there but "not available"), get their permission and signature, get back in line for the auxiliary who accepts the forms and gives the balls, hope that said auxiliary was in a good mood (some days, and depending on the auxiliary they would just refuse to give balls), get the ball, run to the other side of the school, play, run back and get back in line, and hope that your turn comes before the bell rings... anyway, it was a disaster. Every day people payed 20 cents (for us kids that was quite a lot), and most days my classmates didn't get to play at all, when they did it was only for about 5 minutes. At the end of the year, some students tried to get their own balls back from the school but, of course, now they where "school property".

Anyway, today this sounds totally insignificant, but at the time this issue was the bane of our little existence. All of this story, just to relate to Harry and his friends during the mad reign of Dolores Umbridge.

Moving on! The Half-Blood Prince continues the same interesting theme as the previous book, of a build up to a final confrontation between Harry and Voldmort. But I'm going to jump forward to the last book, the Deadly Hallows, because I just finished it last night. It was really good, I loved the fact that they abandoned Hogwarts and the text developed around the interactions of Harry, Hermione and Ron, while they are on the run, hunting for horcruxes. And honestly, already knowing the main plot, because I saw the movies, the thing that interested me more in the books was exactly that, getting to know the characters better, and expand the details that I already knew, as well as get to knew new things. I also liked the way that the author killed important characters, their deaths where not long, some of them even died "off scene" and the realization of their deaths by Harry where very brief... that made the consequences of their death's even more impactful. I, personally, would have killed a lot more characters, especially some background named characters, instead of just saying "many died", give names, names that maybe only appeared once before, but at least it makes us feel even more. But ok... this is not a Song of Ice and Fire, I get it. I just like death in books... kill everyone! Leave just 10% of the name characters alive, Harry looses an arm, Rom looses a finger (poetic oh oh) and... no... Hermione is fine. 

Now for a few problems. I think that some details of the story would be different if it was written today. For example the fact that all Slytherin are somewhat bad, everyone hates them, none of them stays to fight in the final battle. And then, everyone supports Gryffindor, even during the quidditch matches, when they plays against Slytherin, all the others support it. But I think that such is all due to patriotism, J.K. Rowling is English, and there's nothing more English than a golden lion in a red field.

There are also some problems regarding inconsistency along the series, I'll give an example for the last book. For instance, at the end, Harry decides to return the Elder Wand to Dumbledore's grave, thinking that the power of the wand will end with the death of it's last owner, himself. And so all it's safe... BUT, Dumbledore died, and the wand's allegiance passed to Draco, because he disarmed Dumbledore. Then the wand was buried with Dumbledore, until Voldemort stole it, but the wand's allegiance remained with Draco until Harry disarmed him... so the wand's allegiance passed to Harry, and Voldmort never had the wand's allegiance. The author sets up that the wand's power has only been kept contained because of secrecy, no one knew who was the owner of the wand, for many many years, and so it didn't feel in someone that might miss use it. But now, after the final confrontation at Hogwarts, everyone that was present knows that the Elder Wand belongs to Harry Potter! So, if Harry ever gets disarmed before he dies, the Elder Wand's allegiance will switch to whoever disarmed him. And, it would not be very hard to deduce that, if Harry was not using the Elder Wand, then he must have returned it to Dumbledore's grave... so the cycle would continue anyway! It would not end with Harry's death...

And, if a wand switched allegiance, when it's owner is disarmed... well, for example, every member of the DA (and possibly everyone is the school) practiced expelliarmus... so all of their wands have switched allegiance? Or must you do the spell with the intent of claiming their wand? That also doesn't make sense, because then (for example) Harry would not have claimed Draco's wand... A bit of a mess.

But anyhow...there a lot of similar problems, I had to do some "suspension of belief" and ignore some issues. Overall I enjoyed the experience of reading all the book, as an adult, and after having watched all the movies. It's not a revolutionary story, but it did shake the word of literature in the start of this century...millennium. 

Another big rant... oof. Didn't use colors this time, it was not needed. On to the next one.

"The Last of Us - Part 2", by Naughty Dog | How to "fix it".

First of all, a small disclaimer, I have not played any of the games, I don't even own a playstation. But I have seen the full gameplay from both games on Youtube, (shout out to "my boy" RicFazeres for sharing his gameplay with everyone). So far I still didn't see/read any reviews of the game, will get to it after I've finished writing this text. I absolutely loved the first game, and the second... well lets get into it.

**Warning: Spoilers for "The Last of Us- Part II"... obviously...**

**Disclaimer: All of this is purely my personal opinion. That means that it's not worth anything for anyone but me.** 

Focusing on the story itself, I think the game is good, but it has some big issues, specially towards the middle of the narrative. My main intention with this rant, is to maintain the story of the games, while changing it's pacing and structure.

Currently the game begins with some small playable scenes with Joel, Ellie and Abby. Then Abby, and her group, kill Joel. Then we follow Ellie in her path for revenge against Abby for more or less half the game, then they meet and we "go backwards" to follow what Abby has been doing while Ellie was hunting her (taking more or less the same time as we took with Ellie), then when Abby's "timeline" meets up with Ellie's we get a confrontation between the two. After that we return to a bit of PoV changes between Ellie and Abby, where Abby tries to get reunited with the Fireflies and Ellie goes, yet again, on the path for revenge. Then we reach the conclusion of the game.

For someone that didn't play/watch the first game, this seems to be a good story, but for the millions of fans that experienced the first game, there was a great problem. I totally get the messages that Naughty Dog was trying to transmit. The messages where good, they worked! What didn't work was the way that they where delivered. In my opinion, it is very important to, not only transmit said messages, but make sure that the reader enjoys receiving them.

So, what to change? Where to start? Well I suggest that we start before the beginning, let us go back to the "story board" stage and make a few simple tweaks to fix the problem a bit. Let us pretend that we work for Naughty Dog, and it's been a few months since the first game was released; what are the three main things we can take for granted?

1- The game was an absolute success, so "our" brand now has the "guarantee" that people will buy the next title no matter what.

2- Everyone now loves Joel.

3- Everyone now loves Ellie.

Ok, now lets advance to the first "mistake" (in my opinion) that Naughty Dog committed with this game, the announcement of the game itself. I hear people complain about Naughty Dog "abusing" the first point that I mentioned above. Things like: "Oh they knew that everyone would buy the game, so they just did a shitty story and sold it anyway." I think that Naughty Dog didn't stretch this first point enough! The fact that Joel dies and Ellie is on a constant path for revenge "surprises" the player in a negative way because everyone loves Joel, and everyone loves Ellie. And now, most people hate Abby. Naughty Dog clearly saw that the players would hate Abby as soon as she killed Joel, and all that love for Joel would be transferred to even more love for Ellie. And then, while following Ellie on her path for revenge we get to know her even better... and love her even more! And then, when the time comes to switch to Abby's perspective, the player is completely on Ellie's side, we want Ellie to succeed, we want her to go back home with Dina, Jesse and Tommy and all be happy, we don't want Abby to win! But the game forces us to try to understand Abby's side, and there lies the problem. Some players understood her reasons, others didn't, some just gave up on the game on this part... but almost certainly all had some difficulties with being in Abby's PoV. I understand that Naughty Dog wanted to give us a view of the opposing side but, for most players, it's already too late because everyone has already taken Ellie's side.

Now, lets get to my idea to how of fix this. To start, Naughty Dog should have used and abused of the fact that everyone already knows that their game would be special. Starting by the title, ditch the "The Last of Us - Part II", name it "The Last of Us II". What difference does that make? Well the "Part II" implies a continuity to Joel and Ellie's story... it's the "second part of their story". "But that's what everyone wanted!" - you say. Yes, and that's why we should not have it, or better... they should not give it to us in a "silver platter". (Does that expression exist in English? I don't know... in Portuguese it makes sense).

For me the game should advertised as "The Last of Us II", all the trailers and advertising would focus on one character: Abby. The producers would say that this was a story of a new character in the same world. "Oh but people would be disappointed because of the lack of Joel and Ellie" Yes, people would be sad, but lets be honest, people would buy the game anyway because it's Naughty Dog and "The Last of Us"! Gamers would feel a bit disappointed, but would still feel curiosity towards the new story and the new characters, so all would go somewhat smoothly, and Naughty Dog had nothing to fear, because they would know that they were hiding a trump card!

The story and themes would remain the same with the game starting with Abby setting out with a group of friends in search  for the people that killed her father (we don't know who). We follow them, and get to know each character better (Mel, Owen, Manny, etc), but specially we start getting attached to Abby. The entire plot line with Lev and Yara can also be adapted into the story, maybe instead of being a local religious sect, the Seraphites could be a nomad religious sect, so the story would remain the same, but the entire plot would elapse during Abby's journey towards her father's killer. She would still save Lev, Yara could still die in a similar way, etc etc (so no message would be lost in this new narrative). But the main point is, by the middle of the game, the players would care and love Abby!

 At this point we can now add a fourth point to the things we can almost take for granted (as "fictional game developers and story tellers working for Naughty Dog):

1- The game was an absolute success, so "our" brand now has the "guarantee" that people will buy the next title no matter what.

2- Everyone now loves Joel.

3- Everyone now loves Ellie.

4- By the middle of the new game, everyone now loves Abby. (and potentially other members of her group).

   

Now everything is set, all the pieces are in place, and we can shock the players, while surprising them and giving them a treat. The player gets shocked, because the character that they now love, care about and "helped" reach their destination, ends up killing Joel! But now, the player gets to play as another character that they love, and thought that they would never see again: Ellie! 

Now everything is balanced, the love for Abby was nurtured during the first half of the game, part of said love was shattered when Abby killed another character that the players already loved, Joel. And now the player must follow another character that they love, Ellie, on her path for revenge. In which, Ellie ends up killing most of the characters that where in Abby's group (and that the player probably also cared about). Leading up to the exact same outcome has we seen in the game, but by different means. 

This way, in my opinion, the messages of the story would be even stronger, the player would be completely divided between siding with Ellie or with Abby, because both had the time to be developed as interesting characters. I believe that most players would not want either of them to die, and would immediately understand that the entire "revenge plot" is wrong and leads only to a unending cycle of despair and violence - which is the same message that the game presents, but some players have just taken sides (most hating Abby). 

Ellie had one game and a half of development, Abby has to manage to be as relatable in just half a game. For this, the only way is to "play" with the emotions of the players even more than the game did. Making Abby the face of the game, and hiding Ellie behind the impact of Joel's death.  This is almost Pavlovian... Be sad that there's no Joel and Ellie - Play with Abby - Care about Abby - Be shocked that Abby kills Joel - Get rewarded with playing with Ellie.

Anyway, nothing else is coming to my head right now, I think I made my point. The game is good, but it could have had a lot more impact and meaning, at least for me... now I'm off to read/watch other people's review's.

(Maybe I'm starting to abuse this "colour" thing.... meh)