As a cis-femme gamer I am SO SICK of playing as grizzled, middle-aged cis-men in every goddamn game with a set story.
Games where you can pick the gender of the protagonist don't count. Whether you play as Man-Shep or Fem-Shep, Mass Effect is exactly the same and the gender choice is exclusively cosmetic. There are very few games with female protagonists that actually commit to the protagonist being a woman and delving into what that entails.
Just in this first trailer, Ciri is trying to save a young woman from being used as a maiden sacrifice and that is a much more emotionally complex situation for her as a young woman herself. I will be pre-ordering Witcher 4 the second it is available because I want more studios to make games with women as the main playable characters so that I can have immersion in my games too.
I haven't pre-ordered a game since Halo: ODST when I was getting a physical copy from GameStop. I am very aware of the problems with pre-ordering, and I still want to pre-order Witcher 4 because I want to send the message that they did not make a mistake by making Ciri the main/playable character.
Mmm but any game that provides a different storyline based on gender is opening themselves up to no end of criticism. There's just no way they'll ever win that one.
Honestly it's free publicity. Like I know they don't like courting controversy traditionally but hbomberguy's video on Woke Brands explains how they've figured out that triggering these people can be really good for sales.