If the female protagonist is akin to some of the female characters in Red Dead II, then I don't think there will be much to worry about. Generally speaking, there was nothing too objectionable in RDRII - someone like a Sadie Adler would make for a fine protagonist. Just so long as Rockstar don't get lazy and write a female character who can't go one minute without going all "fuck fuckity fucking fuck fuck", ie. le edgy routine that female 'comedians' resort to to make up for their lack of personalities. If the rumors are true that she's a late 30s crooked cop, hopefully that will bring an air of maturity to her character. I'm assuming Rockstar are going to stick with the trio protagonist system anyway and the other two will continue to be men.
In isolation, a female protagonist isn't the issue. It's the changing "no punching down" direction being hinted at which could potentially bury it for me. GTA has always been an equal opportunities offender, shitting on bleeding hearts and conservatards alike. I mean the latter is to the point where you even have breadtubers convinced that the GTA series (*which has coasted by for the last 10 years on Shark Cards microtransactions)
has an anti-capitalist message. I always likened GTA's satire to something like Cum Town humor, where for example it would be jokingly critical of American's dogshit healthcare system in one breath, but then would juxtapose that with Faggio scooters, tranny superhero dolls with detachable parts, and mockery of vegans, new agers and weird sexual perversions.
If GTAVI is going to reign in its mockery of those more deluded aspects (of which could be considered as belonging largely on the modern left), and will just become yet another full throated conservative punching bag like plenty other media in the last 5 years, then that's frankly just boring to me. It's also pretty embarrassing for the so-called Rockstar Games, bad boy renegades of gaming, to feel something is now too controversial to joke about. Controversy built this company into what it was.