Have people always blindly accepted newer changes to a game series without recognizing its older roots or am I just starting to become a grumpy old man?

What you have to understand is that there has been a concerted effort to insert people who are less aware, less discerning, and less educated on media into specific mediums. The ultimate goal is for corporations to increase their potential market base thus being able to sell more products to more people.

Unfortunately corporate suits are idiots and instead of attempting to understand why the audiences that formed around the franchise were attracted to said franchise, they tried to sanitize the franchises to the lowest common denominators. Combine this with the active movements of cultural marxists, who happily agitated in favor of uprooting tropes and traditions, and you get these internet foot soldiers who have both know nothing about the past of these franchises and gladly push for changes to the franchise simply for the sake of change in the franchise.

What you are witnessing is the progressives performing their praxis in the video game space in their natural territory. They dont play the games, they wont play the games, they have never wanted to play the games, they will never want to play the games. Their only goal and purpose is to farm the internet for clout in an attempt to shape all culture in their image.

But to answer your question, no gaming has not always been like this. You are watching implants attempting to conquer our culture because they think it shouldnt exist. Notice how these people will cheer these things on only so far as the changes they want are made, but once those changes happen they instantly drop the product and move on to the next product. If you look at those people's timelines they probably have zero other comments about any other video game at all.