I mean Druckmann has a gargantuan ego, I guarantee he encouraged the cringeworthy stuff Tati has been posting or saying. He even admitted IIRC (please correct me if I'm wrong) that he purposefully made sure there was a shot of the character in Intergalactic shaving her head off because he knew it would be controversial.
He's probably one of the most egotistical devs in recent memory, and thinks of himself as an auteur because game critics liked his generic zombie apocalypse story. Look at the Christmas card posted by Naughty Dog where he only included the games he made.
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Because with The Last of Us, it was "baby's first movie game" since games had great stories, but The Last of Us was just a movie which made game critics think that it pushed new ground. Even though the game's story is just a generic older paternal figure taking care of younger child in the apocalypse. It didn't help the game came out in the height of the Zombie pop culture craze where The Walking Dead and Attack on Titan both became mega popular in America.