I saw past the obvious wokeness of the first one because as you said, the story was good (at least until the big reveal) and yeah the combat was legit. I couldn't get past the first 2 hours of second one - good thing I got it on sale for like 10 bucks.

The first one's story wasn't great. It was decent, but what people liked was the BACKSTORY. The tale of Ted Faro fucking over the entire human race not once but twice due to his retarded stupidity cemented him as one of the worst human beings to ever exist. And the first time he didn't just fuck over the entire human race, but made Earth's whole biosphere extinct because he didn't think his perpetual motion killing machines needed a killswitch in case something went wrong.

But Aloy's story is just okay. She plays the "smartest caveman" cliche to a T, but really the reason characters are so impressed with her is because she tells everyone she's from the Nora tribe - which is the tribe with the gimmick of being the stupid Amish while all the other tribes are advancing through civilization. So Aloy, who actually grew up segregated from the Nora and has been completely reliant upon advanced technology to tell her how to survive and fight, knows a bit of how to fight and track things makes people easily impressed by her.

And since Aloy does the Strong Independent Woman thing, there aren't any secondary characters who are memorable. Can't have a boyfriend, can't have a family (albeit there's a plot reason why), can't have a deep emotional connection with anyone else. This isn't the worst thing, since most of the game is just you enjoying the lush environment and fighting robot animals and dinosaurs, but it makes it difficult if you're going to make a show. Not to mention how expensive it would be between depicting a post-apocalyptic Earth and all the robots to fight.