That part, and the player-death sequences(!), plus some other cutscene stuff, really weirded me out. It all read to me as way more sexualized (in a specific, fetishy sort of way) than anything in the old Tomb Raider games. Hated that aspect of it so much that I almost didn't even look at the sequels.

But I'm a dude, I dunno if it read that way to women who played it.

That's not growth, that's a regression. That is trauma and suffering.

Nathan Drake is similarly presented as a hero, but requires a deep psychopathic disconnect from reality to exist as a character.

My wife really disliked masculinization of the main character in the new She-Ra. The original was maybe her favorite cartoon as a kid, and what appealed was that She-Ra was a pretty, presenting-very-feminine princess who was also strong and kicked ass. She took the new representation (however it was intended, which, I think it's a safe bet it wasn't intended this way) as saying "being a strong woman means being more masculine and isn't compatible with the traditionally-feminine", which was very much not anything she was interested in.

In that specific case I think it was a result of the whole show bending almost every gender-presentation toward something less binary, on purpose, but the general tendency to make a woman character stronger simply by increasing her masculine presentation is pretty common and isn't well received by a lot of folks.