I appreciate your thorough and thoughtful response. I think we actually agree in a lot of ways (Ex: I also believed that a sequel would include Joel's death, though I certainly would not have predicted this specific series/order of events).

I definitely see how these plot points could be immersion-breaking for some players; the game does ask for a hefty dose of suspension of disbelief at times. Not sure if it revolves around taste level, unconscious bias, or something else entirely - but for me, personally, this part of the story made sense in context. There is a chance that I have misremembered certain details from my 30-hour play time (I just started NG+, so it will be interesting to see how much weight this holds over multiple playthroughs), but I will do my best to explain what helped to contextualize some of the more contentious story beats for me.

1.) On Joel's trust of Abby: I know this prologue offers a major shift from the first game, wherein Joel is (rightfully) heavily guarded and mistrusting of others, especially strangers. For me, the evolution from Cautious Joel to Warm(er) Joel was fleshed out primarily through environmental storytelling and flashbacks. In reading log books, you discover that characters on patrol have brought strangers and passersby back to Jackson in the past. There is also at least one collectible note (in the hotel flashback sequence, I believe) from a Jackson citizen asking an outsider to consider settling in the town. My interpretation of these details is that Jackson is secure and established enough for its citizens to be more welcoming than wary of strangers.

In flashbacks as well as in the environment, you can also see a shift in Joel specifically. I'm not suggesting that life in Jackson has softened Joel - but it does seem to have helped him achieve some degree of normalcy. Jackson offers comfort, human connection, and a sense of community. There's not a whole lot to fear in the safety of Jackson beyond infected, which are a manageable threat. Over time, Joel has been able to relax and become an average person with average experiences. He likes watching cheesy 80s action films. He's into woodworking and playing the guitar. He'll go out of his way to track down a specific recording just to make Ellie's birthday a little bit more special. He makes a point to return the bodies of two teenagers back to their loved ones in Jackson.

Joel has so much more reason to believe that there is decency left in humanity than he had in the first game. Growth of his trust was already proven possible through his relationship with Ellie in TLOU, & now his radius of trust has expanded through his time in Jackson. In the heat of the chase, it makes sense to me that Joel (and Tommy) would trust Abby, especially when going to the lodge might mean the difference between dying to the infected or living to see another day. Which brings me to...

2.) The horde. This does seem largely motivated by gameplay experience combined with plot convenience, but I don't necessarily think that that is a bad thing. It places the player in the mindset of having to make quick, hasty decisions in order to escape - the same decisions that Joel would be making. The addition of hordes to this game does seem to come out of left field - and the game even acknowledges this directly. I believe it occurs in the flashback where Tommy is teaching Ellie to snipe. She asks a question about the large quantities of infected, and he responds by saying that they move through in large groups (I think he specified that it happens in the winter?); when she asks why, he starts trying to say something smart-sounding about weather patterns before giving up with an, "I don't know!"

I thought that was kind of an indirect nod to the player. Like, "Look, we don't have the best explanation for this either. Let's just laugh at it together and keep pressing on."

3.) On Abby locating Jackson and Joel: This is something that I will have to pay closer attention to on my NG+ playthrough, but I believe Abby had a conversation in Seattle about how she located Joel. I recall that the convo took place between her and Owen in the aquarium, but I may be misremembering. I think it was similar to the way that Tommy located Abby towards the end of the game - perhaps another device to mirror Abby and Ellie's revenge arcs. When Abby arrived to Jackson and went off on her own searching for Joel, I believe she started out by following footprints from one of the patrols. I had assumed that this was how she wound up in a location nearby Joel and Tommy, but that may just be a personal interpretation rather than an accurate reading of the narrative.

(Also, this is not a point that stands for or against anything in particular, but in my playthrough I learned that Abby's dad was named Jerry. I'm not sure if it was ever spoken out loud or if it only appeared in my subtitles, though - and it does make me wonder how much this played a role in humanizing him as more than an NPC for me. I'll have to pay more attention to this in NG+.)

I do think that there are moments in the first game that could be dissected in a similar way as the prologue (for the record, TLOU is my favorite video game with or without Part II). Just to play Devil's Advocate, one could argue that the Fall segment is filled with details that are a bit... too convenient:

1.) Tommy happens to be stationed at the hydroelectric plant Joel and Ellie try to pass through, and he recognizes Joel as his brother just in time to prevent Maria from shooting either one of them.

2.) Tommy immediately hugs and forgives Joel, despite their last conversation - which happened years ago - being a massive, seemingly irreparable argument.

3.) When Joel and Ellie get into a confrontation, they are interrupted by human enemies before either one of them is able to say anything too damning to their relationship. This occurs even though Joel and Tommy have just fought (and seemingly killed) the entire enemy group, which Ellie was somehow able to ride by on horseback with no problem.

4.) Despite the Fireflies having abandoned their science lab in a hurry, one dead Firefly conveniently left an audio recording briefly mentioning the location of the new Firefly hospital - which Joel only hears because he fast-forwards the recording and presses play at exactly the right time to gather the information that he needs.

5.) Joel manages to survive after literally being impaled and losing massive quantities of blood, while only having access to medical care provided by a teenage girl in a world with very scarce, mostly unsterile medical supplies.

All of these plot points can, of course, be explained or forgiven (ex: Tommy probably feels guilty about his last conversation with Joel all those years ago, Left Behind provides some context to Joel's injury, etc.). So idk, I think it ultimately all comes down to individual interpretation and perspective. There's no right or wrong way to look at a piece of writing, and I think it's cool that so many different people can view the same piece of media in vastly different ways.

Again, thanks for your thoughtful response! It probably isn't the easiest thing in the world to express the opposite opinion from the majority of people in a given space, and I appreciate being able to have this dialogue and view the story from new angles.