What, I’m going to play TLoU 2 without playing 1 or GoW 4 without playing 1-3?

Part I and Part II are both on Steam, so you can get the full Last of Us experience without a console, and GoW 2018 is a soft reboot, so playing the original trilogy isn't strictly necessary.

As for GOW 1-3...there's no PC port, so you've got two options: sail the high seas and emulate them via PCSX2 and/or RPCS3, or get the games and a used PS3 off of eBay.

And, given I've already mentioned emulation:

My entire experience with Sony is that I loved Patapon on the PSP (I would sell my fucking soul to get it to play on a smartphone god)

If you're looking for Patapon on your phone, the only course I know of is to grab PSP emulator PPSSPP and find the ISOs online. If you're fine playing them on your PC, a remaster of the first two games is coming to Steam on June 10th.

(I am deep in the weeds on this shit, I'll admit)

pretty much same! I’ve heard good things about some of the games published under Sony, and their umbrella as a publisher still includes excellent studios whose previous games I have very good memories of. but… I just can’t swing the price for a PS5, it really doesn’t feel worth it just for a few games, and I’m not a huge fan of the hardware design. they also seem to have fumbled PSVR2, and I was a big fan of the indie VR scene and how accessible it was on the PSVR1. on top of everything else, I feel like I’ve gotten by far more mileage out of open platforms than I have from any modern console — so for me, just like you, most Sony releases are invisible unless they’re the ones that bomb