I'll start by saying that the decision to not have Joel as a main character was the only right call. I don't have any animosity towards him, but as a character, he was pretty much done. The whole first game is really about Joel getting his daughter back, and in the process, regaining some of his lost humanity. After a fashion, he does both. It can be argued whether what he did was justified, but it really doesn't matter; from his perspective, he did the right thing and would do the same thing again. He has found his peace, such as it were. But where you do go with such a character? I suppose the writers could have killed off Ellie, but then it would be like the first game all over again. So, no issues with Joel getting offed at the very start. You need some motivation into the events that follow.
So far, so good. And I don't mind playing as Abby, it's good to have some gameplay variation, and while the whole "violence begets violence"-thing may be too played out, it's nice to have a different perspective to the events. But the problem is, you never really get to know the characters involved that well. If I kill someone, and later learn that person had a name and perhaps hints of a personality, it really does nothing for me. I'd need to care about that person for me to care about them dying.
I think this is exemplified by what was to me the most shocking death in the game, that of Jesse. Shocking, as in coming so out of the blue and unceremoniously, but not because I really cared. Sure, we get to spend some time with him. But what do we know of him as a person? He... uhh... umm... provably boned Dina at least once, so he's got that going for him I guess...
There's no easy fix for this though. The game already overstays it welcome a bit I think, it would have benefited from tighter editing. So, we can't have like a whole first game's worth of character interaction for both of the main characters to establish relationships with other characters, but perhaps doing a more intimate story with fewer characters could have helped. Also I feel the third faction (whachhacallit, those guys in California) was kinda pointless, you never got anything else out of them besides "they're bad".
The ending though, that I have no issue with - with the final cutscene with Joel. Without that cutscene it would have been totally pointless, but as it is, I'm fine with it.
Oh, one more thing. Was I the only one who thought Abby had like totally killed Tommy in the theatre? When I saw Tommy at the farm my first though was "oh please no, this is a dream sequence". I'm glad that turned out not to be the case, but for a while I was really worried.
It took me 39 hrs in my first run. Looks like you gonna hit 40+.
