I've seen a lot of the spoilers and my initial thoughts is: how bland. Feeling a bit too safe and boring, and not feeling like there's any brilliance of writing.
Of course, that might change, even cliches and boring elements can work well depending on the execution. The Last of Us has always been a story about human relations and the human existence, meaning that it's overall not about the setting itself, as it's about the character interactions. Still, it's a bit disappointingly safe. It's seemingly (what was hinted as) Kill Bill Vol 3 or Battle Royale 2, with a twist of MGS2 (except not as interesting).
I do think it's interesting that they move the story away from Ellie and Joel, which is something I think also is kinda good. "The Last of Us" and not "Joel & Ellie". Honestly my thought originally was that "The Last of Us" would work like how "Final Fantasy" works, being self-contained titles. My imagination before TLoU2 was announced, was that TLoU2 would be placed a bit in the future, in space, as part of the human exodus from planet earth due to some sort of disaster, whether environmental or otherwise, following some of the settler planets. Even if it kept the same setting, I imagined they'd mostly focus on a new set of survivors, while keeping some information about Ellie and Joel in various notes.
I think there's a lot of people focusing on unnecessary things, like whining about how Dina looks. I wouldn't say she looks ugly, just ordinary, and she's supposed to be a character in the story, not necessarily some glorious idealized character or attempt at titillation. Or focusing too much on the christian cult thing, which I think is an utterly boring choice but it's not bad as long as it's not taking too much focus from the human aspect. Or focusing too much on realism, considering that in gameplay Joel does some pretty ridiculous shit and women can indeed beat up men depending on the circumstance. That's not to say that it might be far too unrealistic for the game depending on the circumstances (but Ellie at least has been shown using weaponry, tactics and speed to make up for strength difference).
But TLoU was never about "cycle of violence", so that message utterly falls flat. It's trying to play up the revenge story cliché, but utterly failing at having any connection at all. Kill Bill is literally a revenge story, but self-contained, whereupon Kill Bill vol 3 as the idea was, intended to be a commentary on that.
It'd make more sense if you started off as Abbie, rather than thinking switching her in later. Switching her later seems like an attempt at a cheap plot twist. Starting Ellie off with a revenge story is also a terrible way at treating her character, which had so much potential from the first game. Still, perhaps its execution is better than the trainwreck the concept seems at the moment.
