Jedi Fallen Order - you start off as a low pay grade welder, and your buddy is a revolutionary peasant

Yeah a lot of the story based games are just getting better and better in terms of characters and inclusiveness and avoiding that "comic book levels of deepness" trope as you said. (Except for COD lol, from what I've heard the story mode is just worse and worse, apparently they turned captain Price into a "just following orders" goon :-( ). There's a noticeable improvement there. It doesn't mean those older games with the usual story aren't bad, it's just not every game needs to be like that, like it was in the 2000s. If people are mad that gaming is becoming more popular and approachable by more people, that's their problem I guess.