After having slept on it, I've realised that my visceral negative reaction to these leaks can be directly attributed to my love for these characters. I just hate to see Joel & Ellie treated so badly. Treated, in my opinion, with such disrespect.
Like I said already, I was prepared for Joel's death in part 2. We know he was a bad guy between the intro to part 1 & his meeting Ellie. I could understand karma catching up to him in the end, if that was what the creative types in charge of the story wanted to do with him. I just don't like seeing it that way. But what pushed it all too far for me was also, added to Joel's suffering, seeing Ellie beaten, broken & humiliated in such a graphic way.
I'm just not down for this. Again, I get that it's a violent world where bad things happen. I get that & I'm not saying that our heroes shouldn't struggle. I simply feel like there's a line out there, which you can push up against, in terms of shocking your audience with events that will disturb them (treating the heroes badly). Which you can even step over if you're careful about it. Basically, for me, Naughty Dog have blown straight past that line with a tunnel vision, ignoring the warning signs everywhere.
I'm just not into this at all. They've went too far, for me. There's no way I'm getting this game on release now. What I'm going to do is wait & see if all this stuff is actually an accurate depiction of events. If the story actually does play out like this. If these leaks are accurate, if it does all go down in this way, then I'm out. Good luck to the people who like this direction, I'll leave them to enjoy it in peace.