The problem though with Atreus, or Ellie From The Last of Us, along with nearly every A.I. companion from the last two generations is that their purpose is more a narrative one than a gameplay one. They hardly have that sense of mechanical interaction you had with characters like Yorda from Ico, Agro from Shadow of the Colossus, or Ashley from RE4. Developers now kinda want to have their cake and eat it; they want the player to have a companion, but they don't really want to do much with them other than have them talk to the player. Atreus shoots arrows, sure, but they could've easily made it so Kratos had a shoulder-mounted crossbow or some other magic that served the same purpose. There's just little if any gameplay interaction between Kratos and Arteus. And that interaction doesn't need to be Arteus being more vulnerable and needing protection; Agro in SotC couldn't be killed at all, but that horse still has a real physical and mechanical presence in the game. They could've had Atreus serve as a combo extender, like how he sometimes jumps off of Kratos' back to fire an arrow, but make it an actual mechanic that I can input, and have different moves for combos; have Kratos and Atreus' skills link up as you acquire new combat abilities for them both. This would give Atreus a more concrete sense of belonging besides just shooting arrows. Same with Ellie. It might sound silly, but the throw mechanic could've been used to do something as simple as playing catch with her when you're just chilling outside of combat scenarios.
I like both those two characters, I just wish they would've had an actual impact on the gameplay.
Returning to Resident Evil, in RE2 Remake they also cut out any gameplay interaction Claire had with Sherry, or Leon had with Ada. Now, in the original there was little to speak of, but you still had sections where they were with you as you had to deal with enemies, and they could get killed. These sections weren't very good, but they still gave you a sense of 'Oh shit, I'm actual kinda responsable for this kid' in regards to Claire, or 'Hey look, she's actually helping me shoot some zombies' in regards to Leon. And they could've done something similar in the remake, but they didn't, when this would've giving a stronger impression of these characters being with one another besides cutscenes and dialoge.
And with this being the current mindset among developers, I feel a huge part of Resident Evil 4 (when remade) will just get nixed.