Yep, or playing section by section with Ellie and than Abby. The sooner after Joel's death you find out why she did it, the easier it becomes to accept it. And the build up to the theater confrontation works better if you spent equal time back to back before getting to that point, rather than getting there with Ellie and then spending ten hours to get back to that same point with Abby.
nah, the day 1 - day 1 - day 2 - day 2 approach wouldn’t work at all imo
1. It would take out a lot of the surprise/mystery of where Abby is as you’re looking for her during the first 3 days
2. The impact of certain things would suffer, like killing someone as Ellie in day 1 then seeing them alive again in Abbys day 1 only half hour later wouldn’t hit the same,
3. This wouldn’t solve the “theatre” problem either, you’d play day 3 as Ellie, have Abby turn up, then take control of Abby again earlier that day as she wakes up in the aquarium, no matter how you slice that part it would always feel inconsistent regardless of how much time it took you to get back to that point.
4. The pacing would also feel worse, you’d be swapping back and forth too much to a point you would feel you weren’t spending enough time as Ellie, and not enough time consistently with Abby to familiarise with her story, people not happy about Abby would be even more annoyed with the game for pulling them away from Ellie 4 or 5 times. The complaints for the games pacing would be way worse
the best way that worked for this story was the way they did it imo