What about a new episode between the current second and third one? After defeating the second boss, things look unconvoluted. So after sleeping in a bed you appear right in front of a convention all of a sudden? What about an episode where we fight mythological monsters (minotaurs, unicorns, vampires, you name it.) with a jab at occultism, cryptocurrencies, TV series (Lost series? Game of Thrones? Buffy? Uwe Boll also made other movies; Far Cry, Alone in the Dark, Bloodrayne...), other video games (Minecraft? Among Us?) and weird social media trends happening in between those two episodes?

Perhaps Dude finds himself in the middle of an island then the clashing with the boss of the island (a mythical creature?) devastates the land and sends him flying. So waking up at the front doors of a convention next to an abyss wouldn't feel puzzling or a skipped part in the story. Just an idea.

Also please take a look at ammunition problem. Some overpowering weapons have way too much ammo while others don't. That encourage some hoarding of power ups by only using those overpowered weapons and Ammo Packs lay in the inventory unused. I think you tried to counter act that by making the combat more dense and tightly packed but we'll see.
Some weapons are still very overpowered and allow you to spare and stack power ups by just using them solely. You can solve the issue of increasing the ammo count at first pickup of low max ammo type weapons in case player would like to push forward without exploring I believe.

Another thing I wanna mention is pastel people and how you can make the game more dynamic. Along the game I hardly needed extra health from killing civilians and I think it was unnecessary when health pickups were this abundant. I suggest to increase the spawns of Goliaths in case player kills way too much pastel people to punish them.