why evil catholics though? and not some redneck christian cult? 

What makes Abby ‘a shoehorned rando’? Because she wasn’t in the first game? This is where I feel a lot of people like yourself are jumping the gun. Given Naughty Dog’s history, wouldn’t it be better to see how Abby is actually introduced and developed in the game itself. It doesn’t seem like she is some side-character, or a NPC appearing in a single mission. Imagine if the God of War 4 story had leaked, could you see the fanbase going off on one because Kratos was wandering around with ‘some random kid’? My point being in that, Atrues was an unknown going into God of War 4, but got good character development and was generally well received. Its quite possibly that Abby is handled in the same way, although I’ll reserve judgement until I actually play the game.

Im not sure what the rules allow me to say about Abby’s character, but if she is what the rumours say she is then again people are jumping the gun I feel (unless its show by her behaviour in clips that I haven’t watched). If she brings this fact up in every other sentence, then sure it will be annoying, but its not like the dialogue between between Ellie and Joel was like this in the first game.

By ‘pronouns matter in the apocalypse’, it doesn’t seem like Abby is on some rights campaign. This kinda contradicts your point about it not being about the lesbian angle. Its like with the real-world pandemic, it doesn’t just flip a switch and make everything fall neatly in line.

So personally I was expecting Joel to die in this game, for some reason I was expecting Ellie to be his killer. I know alot of people are pissed about Joel but I'm not for that reason.
I'm not expecting Ellie to die and even though it's a unconfirmed report I'm still not expecting it. I wouldn't be happy because I think she's a great character, however if she did then that's how the story goes, we can't control a books plot that we read so expect surprises.

The one thing I don't get and I can't see how it's going to play out is, playing as Abby. Everybody that played the last of us has came to really like Ellie and Joel, so how can they expect the player to enjoy playing as a character that kills one of them and beats the shit out the other? I'm struggling to see how we're meant to get a connection with her as a player and enjoy being her. It's a strange decision.

That feels like an assumption. The event in question, Joel's rescue of Ellie, in the last game is hardly a minor one. Likely no one in-game was crying about it at the time as they were all dead. I'll give you that it does make it seem that Last of Us was initially planned as a standalone game otherwise Abby would have been introduced in a cliffhanger ending.

That Abby's identity is possibly something that could have been swapped out, but everytime anyone puts a character like this in a game/film etc then they are accused of pandering for diversity points. No one seems prepared to give the character a chance.

Can't say I'm too hopeful about the future of ND. It's never good when you get rid of key tallent (Amy Hennig) then ending up at a point where you have huge staff turnover and it's hard to see how they don't end up with very messy development processes. Games are almost never good when there's development hell add in all the woke nonsense being stuffed into it and I can see lots of poor games being released :( It's not like we've not seen this story before (think Mass Effect, for example)

Abby still seems to have a physically masculine build from the images I've seen, so likely hormones haven't come into it.

One thing I find funny is the last three messages that aren't mine are all from male gamers posting anti-'woke' message, and all three have women as their profile picture.

That reply is even funnier. It also reinforces what I'd drawn from it in the first place.

It feels like when someone says they love lesbians because they watch lesbian porn - what they're really doing is fetishising them.