EVERYONE thought Ripley was the coolest hero ever in Alien and Aliens. Same with several hit movies containing black leads around the same time, Yet NO ONE was pandering or complaining that "everyone's a Nazi".. Aggressive shoehorning vs doing what's the best for the experience is two entirely different things. From being an old gamer my experience is that the more woke the world gets the more divisive it becomes.
Because they were rare exceptions. Heck, you know Alien 3 was originally not going to have Ripley but the studio head insisted they keep her in the story as it offered something unique for audiences as barely any other blockbusters had a strong female as the main focus. It's why pre-2000's, people conveniently seem to think of only three examples of blockbuster films of strong female leads: Ripley, Sarah Conner (who's really only the action lead in T2, in 1 it's clearly Kyle), and Leia (and the final one isn't the best example given the last film kinda just throws in she's Force-sensitive but apparently not as important as Luke as Obi-Wan and Yoda put all their money on him and seemed to barely consider her a factor). It's because these are really the only examples.
Considering 50% of the population is female, forgive me if that don't impress me much. Now, I'm not saying exactly 50% of blockbuster leads have to be women, but the INSANELY low amount is noticeable. Then more and more started showing up and that's when people started getting upset. I have no idea how they're being "shoe-horned" in since again, there's KIND OF A LOT OF WOMEN ON PLANET EARTH LAST TIME I CHECKED. And as for black leads, A) yeah no, there were barely any black leads (as in THE LEAD, so nobody bring up Lando or something) in blockbuster movies pre-2000's and even not that many pre-2010's, and B) I get that people living in certain places don't have many black people in them, but they also need to understand that the U.S. does has plenty and heaven forbid we have fiction coming from U.S. creators reflect that. Hell, when it comes to anime barely anyone goes, "why are there barely any black characters?" as it's understood most anime take place in Japan where IRL virtually everyone is Japanese. BUT then when an upcoming anime was announced called The Great Pretender and it was revealed the main female character was a black woman, OH BOY, certain people on MAL threw a hissy fit screaming about SJWs invading anime, ignoring the fact that A) virtually all anime have zero black characters so having ONE new one is hardly adding to the percentage of their representation, and B) the story synopsis clearly suggests an international cast, several of the characters are from various European countries, yet the main female being black is "an issue" in spite of all this. It's just pathetic behavior.
I don't even understand what's "best for the experience" even means. My issue with the other side's argument is that it feels they often look at women and non-white characters as they have to "prove themselves" worthy to be the lead, but white male characters get more of a pass. I've seen it too often in fictional debates, women getting good a little "too quickly" as something will cause some people to cry foul, but men who do it even within the same series/franchise won't cause any fuss.
Maybe actually explain why any of these new games' stories would be better if the lead was a white male (hell, I actually explained why I think the lead of Returnal being a middle-aged woman makes sense, conveniently you gave no counter-argument to the example I provided). Yet the people who say this whole "it's not best for the story!" defense rarely explain why, they just claim it is. Funny, in my experience Spider-verse is definitely the best Spidey film in terms of story and character development, only the original Spidey 2 even comes close, yet I guarantee you when that movie was announced I heard the exact same flimsy noise that I'm hearing when this new Spidey game was announced, people complaining that this "might not be best for the story" without offering any real explanation as to why it might not be (and the few times they did, they showed they were kind of normies when it came to superhero comics given that hero legacies have been a thing since the 1950's). Hey, fun fact, but if I had access to a time travel machine and all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted with it, at no point would I go back in time and ask Stan Lee if Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, etc. being white males "was best for the story". Because it's what he's creating and I'll wait to experience it in full before sticking my nose up and questioning it based on literally nothing.
Hell, I have zero interest in biker culture, but I still bought Days Gone and while the first 10 hours as I said are a rough start eventually Deacon's story and development did grow on me. I could have just stuck my nose up and been like, "ugh, a biker character, why?" but I gave the storyteller(s) a chance and they did a good enough job in my eyes. Could a female lead or non-white lead have made the story even better? Possibly, but I have no way of knowing, and likewise, you have no way of knowing if a while male lead would make the stories of these upcoming games better. None of these games' trailers called anyone a Nazi. None of these games' trailers seem like "aggressive shoe-horning" to me. It doesn't even make sense to me, the only way that could happen is if most of these developers worked on creating these games TOGETHER and planned this all out and no one who knows game development could actually think that's the case. If anything, I'd say games with leads who aren't white or male selling well has just made more developers and creative minds more willing to "risk" having their leads be that way. It's a far better environment for creative minds in my book than the PS3/360 gen where SO MANY leads were just stern-faced white dude with bald or shaved head (basically, all Infamous 1 lead guy), and the developers of Bioshock Infinite were pressured in removing Elizabeth from the cover art because a survey done with frat guys ([sarcasm]CLEARLY the only people who play video games[/sarcasm]) said they'd be less likely to buy a game if a girl was on the cover and so the actual main focus of the story (Booker is important, but Elizabeth is definitely the most important and grows the most) was removed from the cover. I am SO eternally grateful there's no signs we're going back to those sort of lack of variety in leads that dominated those years of gaming.