IGN takes issue with white male lead in Days Gone.

[Otter]

Kerotan said:

Otter said:

In this actual sentence replace the word white with any other race and simply wouldn't sense because there is not an abundance of non white  "gruff" protagonists in AAA games.

It'd be like a writer saying yet another Mascot lead 3D platformer, a sentence that may have made sense in 2000 but not today where mascots & 3D platformers are rare compared other kinds of characters and genres.

What if he said yet another white mascot 3d platformer? My comment would be the same. Why is it necessary to bring up the colour? 

Because the race contributes towards the trope.  An example is how Asian nerd is a trope in lots of popular media but black nerd is not. Its not that complicated.