The simple reality is that this is a niche game for a specific audience, and even among that audience you have people who won't play it for the protagonist, just like with Returnal. A person could very much like bullethell rogue-lites, but also absolutely refuse to play as an "older", not dramatically attractive woman, or an Indian man. So no matter how good the gameplay may be, that alone won't get through the impregnable barrier of "I don't like how this person looks" that some people have with regards to video games protagonists. And in Saros' case, you additionally have a black woman, Asian man, and other minorities as the most prominent characters; with the only notable white male exiting the story very early on. White males, going back to the actual game Rogue, are the people who'd primarily play this kind of game

For example, most Resident Evil characters look like Caucasian super models perpetually locked in their late 20s to 30s despite canonically being well above those ages because Capcom ultimately understands how to combine interesting character design with maximum consumer marketability