You're absolutely right of course that the game doesn't deserve a 0, not even close.
What I
strongly disagree with is
Diversity is always good, and if we truly respect gaming, we should stop bringing our personal opinions into every games that is releasing today.
That's outright wrong. Diversity
can be good. If it fits the setting and is well written.
First, it needs to fit the setting. If it players in a futuristic setting, or any current-day metropolitan area, absolutely. It'd be negatively weird not to see diverse people in such a setting.
This goes both ways though - I really don't want to see a racially diverse cast in any game or movie playing in most historic settings - this would just be enormously out of place in the vast majority of cases.
Second, representation should be somewhat believable. Watching some of the more recent Netflix productions, you would think that 90% of the world's population is gay/lesbian. I think it's great some previously unrepresented groups are now included in media, but I feel like the
amount of representation currently has little to do with their
actual representation in society.
Third, writing should feel natural, not forced. A particularly negative example in my mind was Star Wars. Given its setting, this is absolutely MADE for representation, which is great. But then, the main cast is basically exactly 1 white girl, 1 lesbian asian girl, 1 indian guy, 1 black guy. At this point, I'm immediately taken out of the movie and my mind goes "yeah ok, they filled the quotas here", this doesn't feel natural at all.
When representation is screwed up, it breaks the 4th wall, which is not a great thing.
Ideally, viewers/gamers should be immersed in the media, not taken ouf of it thinking "right, this feels somewhat out of place - looks like the producers have ticket off some diversity checklist here".