An interview from 2012 with directors Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann during the development of the first The Last of Us is being discussed online. They explained that they wanted to transfer the cinematic approach of Uncharted into an apocalyptic world, which, in their opinion, lacked such stories.
Druckmann claimed that cinema and comics have long told stories about people facing difficult moral choices, while video games avoid this topic. He effectively dismissed Resident Evil and other series, calling them grotesque massacres without deeply developed characters.
Such statements seem arrogant given the multitude of horror and survival games released long before Joel and Ellie's adventures. At the same time, the success of The Last of Us did indeed influence the industry and spawned many imitators, including A Plague Tale and Days Gone.
The irony is that modern installments and remakes of Resident Evil also successfully use a more serious tone, and new games in the series are released much more frequently than sequels to The Last of Us.