Women have always had inherent value owing to their ability to birth children. By contrast, men have always had to accrue value unto themselves by their works and deeds. I think this fundamental reality is reflected in our media depictions of male versus female protagonists.
The hero’s journey is essentially the coming-of-age story of boys becoming men via trials and suffering. We become worthy of our stations in life, and our women and our families, through accomplishment and overcoming challenges. Or we fail, and we die, literally or spiritually. Either way, it’s interesting.
Women don’t experience the same climb. They begin the game with tremendous, society-sustaining value. It literally cannot be overstated. It is, however, automatic and requires no effort. There’s no progression or arch or triumph. The only potential for drama is the tragedy that results when a woman squanders her greatest value.
Injecting women into traditionally masculine “hero’s journey” stories is a recipe for boredom. Because women begin the story with all of the value they require to be accepted and promoted by the tribe. Whatever motivations are concocted for these female protagonists are inevitably shallow and pointless. Their arcs are flat and uninspiring. The most they can muster is obnoxious and entitled subversion; they rebel against the “unfair restrictions” placed upon them by nature - as if men are so privileged in their mandatory pain and labor.
I think this theory maps pretty well onto modern girl boss characters. I’m sure it has been explored. Just connecting my own personal dots on this one.
For me, it's not so much the "journey" being inherently masculine but I do think that's an issue. For me, the issue is that female characters are depicted in how they go through the journey as if they were a man. I think a woman in a masculine journey could work if she acted through the journey as a woman would act.
Video games are so obsessed with "equality" that they write the female and male characters as equals more-or-less in their overall demeanor, goals, way of thinking, what they are happy about or upset about, their behaviors with respect to social interactions, their thoughts and moral values on the story at hand, etc... It just makes the female characters entirely unrealistic so no one likes them.
Here's a good test. Imagine a video game and imagine a female character. Now imagine that same character with the same dialogue, role, story-arc etc... was a man. Minus all the "romance" scenes and dialogue where they mention their sex, if you replaced the female character with a male model, would it seem out of place? If the answer is mostly no, then that's a bad female character. You should be able to tell right away the character is female because of how she behaves. However, this is a big elephant in the room problem with modernity. No one wants to admit men and women are significantly different in how they behave because that's sexist.
The female characters in video games aren't written like females. They're written like men. We all know why this is. Women hate it when men point out all their behavioral stereotypes because every woman wants to think she's the exception when she's really just like all the other girls.