I randomly remembered the lead up to Assassins Creed Unity which was the first game in the series to have a co-op campaign and not just a multiplayer mode
it caused a huge stink when someone from Ubisoft said that none of the playable characters will be women because "women are harder to animate" that lead to Ubisoft being clowed by everyone to the point when Insomniac games showed off the female main character of sunset overdrive (well create a character) with a parody of the assassins uniform with a caption of "not too hard to animate" or something like that
fans found it weird since previous multi-player games modes in assassins creed had a bunch of female characters but then the game released and the truth came out
there were no female playable characters in the unity co-op campaign because there were no characters at all. they were just recolors of the main character and weren't "canon". in-universe, you're still mostly alone in the story and it was jut a fun way to play with friends. if you played Dying Light co-op it's just like that
for some reason ubisoft explained it in the worst way possible