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Maybe! It sounds strange to say that liking beauty a lot is ideological, but I admit to being extreme in it. The longer I observe the world, the more beauty I think it could use.
I think that we're talking in top 10-5% numbers instead of "practically beyond top 0.00001%" like, e.g. the Dead or Alive girls or the aforementioned 2B/Eve, for the protagonist of a major AAA (AA?) Sony franchise is unfortunate.
Indeed, no one needs these video games to be beautiful, or to have video games at all, or to have beauty at all. I haven't played most of these games, but I'm sure, e.g. TLOU2 is a very good game, thanks to its many positive qualities that have nothing to do with the (non-)beauty of its protagonist(s). I just think the world would be a better place if these video games had been more beautiful.
Indeed, and think of all the creative, varied, distinctive, never-before-seen ways of being attractive that we could have seen in this nearly limitless medium of video games if the character-design portion of the thousands of talented devs and billions of dollars that went into AAA games had been focused on exploring just how attractive they could make their characters, instead of meeting ideological commitments about challenging beauty norms or not appealing to the male gaze or etc. Losing out on that is what I find really sad.
I think you're overestimating AAA devs' creativity and competence.
First, most AAA studios don't make "creative, varied, distinctive, never-before-seen" things, they follow tried and true formulas so their millions of dollars aren't wasted. Even if wokeness didn't exist, most AAA female models would be mediocre, like most AAA gameplay.
More importantly, Game of the Year in the last decade has more often than not been AA or even indie. More money != better product.
More importantly, more money != better product especially for attractiveness, because what even would the extra money go to? A set of pictures or 3D model costs practically nothing to make, just a couple years (or months) of online training and a few hours of work. Taste is the gatekeeper, and do you think there are exceptionally tasteful artists in AAA game studios who could make exceptional art, but are paid not to? Because maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I think the artists with the best taste are those who are most passionate, who work on their own dime, as long as they have enough income to live (from a side job, commissions, etc.)
This discussion reminds me of Signalis, an indie game with a better story than any AAA I've seen, where nearly every character is a young well-endowed woman, presumably as attractive as the developer could make them. Also anecdotally the woke circles I frequent have given it nothing but praise and lots. Sure it's not sexually explicit, but that has been taboo before wokeness and is even in right-wing circles.
My point is that mainstream trends don't matter (except when they lead to censorship, which doesn't happen merely because a female character is too attractive), because the best developers are indie, making whatever games they want as long as they're effectively legal.
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