Unfortunately any coherent, well-reasoned criticism will be lumped in with and assumed to be bigotry. Meanwhile -- despite betraying the core fanbase -- the head honchos at ND will be patting themselves on the back with excellent sales off the back of the first game, shallow reviews from mainstream media and a whole bunch industry people towing the line because its progressive, some sincerely, some not.
While folks such as Cory Barlog can be a bit grating in their public persona, I think God Of War was beautifully done, full of reservation and subtlety in the story. But if he thinks this is great storytelling, that puts a massive dent in my anticipation for whatever he does next. As for Druckman and Gross, I frankly have no interest in whatever they do next, though I'd love to be proven wrong. TLOU is probably dead to me now, especially if they're involved in any future iterations; and frankly, if this is a sign of things to come for Naughty Dog, I'm out.
The biggest, most glaring issue to me is that the Joel and Ellie in this game are in no way the Joel and Ellie from the first game. It's not even a case of them evolving into different characters, as the very events that set in motion this whole cycle weren't even in character. Joel is a careless wimp here and Ellie is just one dimensional.
Regarding the whole "woke" thing, I don't like to assume one way or the other (one part I actually really liked was Ellie<>Dina, at least to begin with), but there's an enormous correlation growing across all art and entertainment forms where whenever the creators signal that they're prioritising representation and social justice in their material, quality takes a backseat and nosedives, time and again. While I think some are far too vitriolic, it's fair for people to start growing wary. Unfortunately, as alluded to above, these things are convenient things to roll out as a defense mechanism, so that you can straw-man and avoid answering fairer criticism, especially when you have swaths of people on twitter and reee to shut down discussion.