Diversity is just there to you, as the viewer. But if Diversity is more important to you as a director/writer than the story, you could decide to kill off a previously main character who is male/cis/straight/white in the first few hours of the game to make room for a muscular woman..who you want to have the spotlight instead. If Joel was given a more respectable sendoff even then there wouldn't have been room for as much diversity as Neil wanted.

When Neil was brainstorming Part II ideas years ago, I can pretty confidently assume that he wasn't thinking "I want to make a sequel to TLOU that's more diverse, with a new muscular female lead."

This is generally what he thinks though, her being muscular is something that gradually happened, but in general yeah that is his thought process, and he's very open about it.

Diversity is a pillar that Naughty Dog considers as important as graphics or music or combat “because, ultimately, it leads to better stories”

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/the-last-of-us-part-ii-neil-druckmann-interview