So my initial impressions after about ten mins (have to go back later and read through the thread, just woke up) are holy shit this is pretty awesome.
First thing I noticed... framerate. Thank christ for what feels like (to me) 60fps. I honestly think the game looks pretty good too, for what it is. I'm in the camp that would rather have average textures/effects in favor of locked framerate though. So take that for whatever it's worth.
Next thing I noticed: actual modern controls? Wow. Rev1 default controls felt pretty shitty tbh and they were poorly animated for anything that wasn't walking or running forward. But here they've done some good work on lateral movement and back peddling. Really good animation imo. You get to have the free camera but also the strafe controls. This is something they've taken from TLoU (other games have done it but TLoU is kind of the high water mark currently) and I think it feels really good.
I thought I would hate the teenager, but so far she's funny actually. There's a cool dynamic at play where she's kind of losing her shit and Claire is like... "Whatever, Been here before. Relax kid",
Anyway obviously have to play more. But this is immediately positive impressions as opposed to Rev1 coming in very mixed initially.
Also... they went for a little satire in the opening, which I thought was a good sign for the story, even if it wasn't executed so well.
Excited to play more.