Normal looking men was (still is) actually remarkable in gaming and with gamers being mostly men and average age of gamers being 35+ it was a genius move to create those characters at that time. The target audience was big.
I played TLOU1 on PS3 as a regular dad, Joel Edition obviously, and the whole story hit hard in every way for me.
Uncharted was great too, I’ve always loved Indiana Jones and playing as Nathan Drake was as close as I could get.
But creating a bald woman today?… idk isn’t that like having Trump-haters as the target audience? I don’t see average men or average women or average teenager being excited for that type of character.
This is the reason of why games like Uncharted, TLOU1 or GoW 2018 were very successful: their protagonists were targeting and succesfully connected with that audience of >30 years old males, some of them dads, which are a huge portion of their audience.
The Destruction AllStar and Concord crew and this bald lesbian didn't connect with that audience.
Then how is Aloy relatable?
She is not a specially great character, but she is ok. Not great, not bad. The main appeal or focus of the game isn't her/her charisma, it's the hunting robo-dinosaurs + great visuals.
Regarding character design, the red haired dreads and using bow and arrows against robot/dinosaurs with explosions and so on are cool stuff that make her appealing. Other than that she is pretty meh and generic hero (which is ok for being relatable). But I wouldn't say she is a bad protagonist. Her moves during action are cool, which also helps when playing to like the game or her.
She is fine, as can be seen on the huge success of her main two games.
I'd say being relatable is more important in games with a bigger narrative/realistic focus regarding their type of game or setting. And that in general (also including more action type games, or fantasy/scifi setting) it's more important being a cool protagonist than being relatable.
