Thing is, the game industry needs more actual journalists (preaching to the choir, right? I digress) that understand games the way Roger Ebert understood films; that is to say, focus more on the overall picture (mechanics, intent, design, how everything from level design to graphical style to framing of shots creates the art).
It's easy to critique a story or characters. It is, in fact, probably the easiest part of in depth analysis.
Most redditors would say that the whole "A man chooses, a slave obeys" scene in Bioshock was phenomenal and mind blowing. But I guarantee you, a fraction of those people could articulate WHY the scene hits so hard. It isn't the dialogue, it's taking control from the player when the only times previous that you couldn't control your character was in flashbacks (ding ding ding important) or being locked into some animation (limitation of the game's design and emphasis on the action) or loading screens (meh, doesn't count).
What I mean by this is that we've got a bunch of 'journalists' that are uneducated in the language of video games, so they are railroaded into focusing on story, dialogue, and characters. When that happens, you are bound to be looking for cliches, tropes, and otherwise, and since a large part of those involve the characters and their interactions, you might grow weary if 'chiseled white dude with 5 O'clock shadow' (in fact, I kinda am too, despite being pro GG). So, the scramble for diversity begins there (which is OK at this point) but also a point where you can easily be roped in to becoming bitter and tired of tropes, akin to the Hollywood greats being so tired of Superhero flicks, wanting more than flashy, generic action.
On top of this, unlike us regular folk, they have to play all of the AAA games for reviews (leading to playing the ones like CoD, Battlefield, Assassin's Creed, etc, all starring generic characters that appeal to a mass audience. But even worse, they play the AA or shitty games that try to piggyback on the current trends, the Homefronts and the Spec Ops (which leads to another point for another day on excusing poor mechanics when the story is good enough. Side note I loved the story in that game, but game play was flat) so they easily grow weary, and crave some diversity, but are unable to find it when the majority of modern games are more CoD and Far Cry than Transistor or FTL (which brings back up not analyzing game mechanics, so they're trapped in playing more generic games than radically different ones that might not appeal to them game play wise).
Anyway, my point is, they grow weary of playing generic shooter 7 and want something different, but can rarely get it. And since they don't understand how to firmly analyze mechanics (because, come on, Video Games are still preteens in age. It took about 40 years for Citizen Kane to change the landscape of film, and even then, it took years to gain recognition, who would even be an expert in reviewing something that is more film or board game at this point than its own entity? Films took 40 years to start shaking off theater conventions and become their own person) they so easily latch onto good stories. It's why "The Last of Us" a game with a good, not particularly usual game story, becomes heralded as "The Citizen Kane" of gaming, despite not really doing much to compare in embodying the medium (Dark Souls is a much better choice, as it uses gaming as a medium and does things only games can do and I do see it years down the road being lauded as one of the most important games ever. Bioshock being the Casablanca).
Now I've pretty much written as essay at this point, so I'll wrap up. Because the journalists become jaded and pessimistic about tropes (because, come on, if you had to watch Marvel movies for the rest of your life, and wanted more, you'd get tired too), they can easily use the bitterness as their ally, and easily get suckered into extremely PC views, using SJW rhetoric as an excuse because they know they have a problem with gaming, but they simply don't know what it is, and SJW logic simply makes sense. They want radical change, and follow ideals that will provide it for them, but simply aren't treating the symptoms of bad game design, because they don't know better.
TL;DR "Journalists" are unlearned in game design and can't review much more than stories (journalism degrees really only teach English classes, not their fault on the surface), become fed up with tropes from shitty games trying to appeal to the LCD, want change, turn to SJW, because it promises change of some sort. It's like movie hipsters saying Marvel sucks, and we need more artsy stuff (despite the real cause being just poor movie making), but with political correctness instead of genres.
TLDR the TLDR we need a gaming Roger Ebert