Nobody had a problem with Mafia III's protagonist

You must have been under a rock. It was pretty controversial at the time to move to a generic black guy protag, the culture war just wasn't loud enough to push it to mainstream media coverage.

The entire game suffered for that change. Now every single villain and half the fucking game is a long "RACISM BAD BAD BAD." It beats you over the head with it every possible fucking second. Including a lot of bad guys whose only crime was not liking niggers, who are in fact committing lots of crime as part of the story and setting, and they must be wrong because of that.

It can join Prototype 2 in the pile of "taking an established franchise, replacing the MC with generic angry black man, and then nobody cares anymore" IPs. And at least Prototype still had a unique idea under that instead of being a worse GTA.