To be fair, in the game you're playing a waiter (or janitor, can't really recall), a complete imbecile totally reliant on the AI of his PDA to make it off world alive.
But yeah, I can totally see the protagonist starting out as a White guy, only for the devs turning him into a shitskin/nigger for diversity points. Same thing happened to South of Midnight.
I can't find proof, but yeah, I'm pretty sure they kept darkening his skin. For the usual reasons.
He's a "Non-Essential Systems Maintaince Chief", which could mean anything from Chief Janitor to "Guy in charge of everything but power, propulsion, navigation, and life support".
To be fair, he's never really seen as an imbecile either. He knows how to use various equipment, pilot subs, gather materials, ect. In fact, compared to a lot of the other crew members that die offscreen, he's pretty damn competent.
And that's AFTER he potentially suffered brain damage from being smacked in the head during the crash landing.
That was part of the charm of the first game; all of these other characters were self-important asshats that got themselves killed, but your character is a quiet, unremarkable, working-man that makes the best of the situation with his helpful, but deadpan AI tablet.
Meanwhile, the second game has you play as a whiny, entitled girlboss with a depressed Alien AI companion, your tablet AI has an obnoxious, unpleasant Pajeet TTS Voice, and your sister you're trying to save turns out to be a terrorist that gets a bunch of decent people killed.
