They weren't exactly short on people infected with cordyceps; it was explained that they needed to dissect Ellie's brain in order to figure out why she'd developed an immunity to it, instead of turning into a crazed zombie like most infectees do.

Ironically, TLOU2 was actually the one which properly explained the situation, and laid it out as being a case of sacrificing Ellie's life to potentially provide a cure, versus the much greater possibility that humanity would eventually go extinct if the cordyceps pandemic was allowed to continue unabated. It was TLOU1's much more cursory explanation of things that allowed people to latch onto the final mission as less a case of a traumatised man making a selfish decision in order to avoid having to relive the loss of his daughter, and more a badass survivor heroically slaughtering a bunch of nutjobs who were about to carve up an innocent girl.

Some of the posts here explaining their dislike for some of the choices makes feel like we’re back to 2020 all over again hahaha

I don't get the complaints about the lenght of games in general. If it's a good game that I'm enjoying, it doesn't matter if it's 100 hours long. I'd rather play that, than two mediocre or bad 50 hour games. And if I'm not enjoying the game, why would I be playing it in the first place?
As for TLOU2, I was very apprehensive about it when all the leaks and negativity blew up before it was even released. I thought ND had actually ruined the whole franchise. However, when I played it, I got what they were going for and it worked out for me in the end. Of course it sucked to lose Joel, but I kind of knew it would be happening one way or the other. It gave the story a powerful emotional drive and a very dark theme and emotional landscape overall, which maybe isn't for everyone.

Whew I just beat the Ratking with 6 grenades and a couple of incendiary shotgun shots, but the super stalker that separated from it was harder than I expected, I remember beating it with one headshot? on my first playtrhough, this time I wasted a lot of ammo and two shivs.

It wasnt a death but a killing and just not a kill, but a savage one, and not by a man or a zombie, but by a woman, and not just a woman but one who looked like a man, and it wasnt at the end of the so players can a have a good experience until that point but right at the beginning of the game, all to ruin their experiences.

What hurt that game was the decision to cater to online social trends of its time. All it did was mar and overshadow whatever merits it had. It was literally the only thing I saw. Woke this, woke that, forced-diversity etc. etc. etc. There was no talk of anything else unless you went past headlines and pushed your way beyond the controversy, which most people don't do. They just see the headlines, buy into whatever the complaints are and move on. The first game didn't suffer from this, and it had near-universal praise as a result. They probably should have done the same with the second (I would have), but they chose to be trendy (or perhaps they really did have an agenda, which is fine, it's their game). It'll be interesting to see what they do in the future.

The game suffered a massive hate campaign before it even released, that's what you read.

Literally any game Sony publishes since is called woke as soon as it is announced, when people know absolutely nothing about the game itself.

God of War Ragnarok was called woke.

Anytime a woman appears the game is called Woke. DEI and Sweet Baby Inc. were the catchphrases for some time, even the government of the USA used DEI, as if it is something bad, as a key word to justify the shit they want to do and get support for it, but it does always come back to Woke. Reaching people with it is the goal afterall.

Woke is a word to represent a dislike to anything and everything, it is used as a justification for any kind of hate as if it cares some justice on it.

The Last of Us Part II does have many types of things going on for it, but Ellie has liked women since the first game and nobody complained at that time. Nobody.

The one that got the most hate was actually Abby, a straight woman, just because she is strong, which is built in her character story, and between the 2 sex scenes the game has, one between 2 women and the other between a man and a woman, the later was the one criticized. People never actually cared about the "woke monster", they just wanted to hate the game as soon as it was discovered Joel was not be the playable character but he was appearing in marketing for the game.

All themes on TLoU are taken seriously. There is nothing trendy about it at all. Not even religion which is first exposed as a cult mind thing ends up being it, there is always the two sides of everything being presented because that is how the wolrd is, real, different people exist and everyone has their own side, all of them passive (and likely) to be flawed.

I played TLOU1 last year on my PS5, but I don't remember her being into girls. Did I miss something?

The very last part of the game, Ellie tells joel about her best friend Riley, that was there when she was bitten, she was bitten too, and she proposed Ellie they could be poetic and lose their minds together, the DLC, Left Behind, is all about their story.

I didn't play the DLC, but I never took any of that to mean she was a lesbian. Maybe no one complained because it was so subtle? I certainly didn't notice lol.