Larian do seem to have mistaken 'edgy' for 'attractive'. Don't get me wrong, I know that edgy is a turn-on for some people, but the female characters on offer are a weird frog-humanoid, and a woman with huge bat-ears (facially attractive, I agree, but those ears are just too alien for me). Looks and race aside, they are both just nasty people. Is this what passes for 'sexy' in Larian's studios?
The appearance of the characters doesn't even enter into it when I'm considering romance when playing a game. For a long period the characters were just a single static picture, and following that were rendered with about as much accuracy as a blow-up doll. A game romance is about the story, not the rendered tits or whatever. I could watch porn if I cared about that.
Let me note though that I think nasty can work in a romance. Morrigan from Dragon Age: Origins was the most popular romance option by far in that game (partially because Liliana is hard to romance as a man) and she's a total bitch (and arguably chaotic evil as well). However - the important thing is she's not a closed person. She's starts explaining her POV regarding the world quite early on, and even if you do "good" things she disapproves of it's possible to gain her favor through gifts and personal conversations.
One could of course argue that the system is "gamey" - and that Larian's system of closed NPCs who you have to earn the trust of is more realistic to how people would act. That said, players want a game, not reality. They want some tangible reward for their actions, and they want things to happen easier in games than RL, since to some extent RPGs are a form of wish-fulfillment. Arguably, people want affirmation in games in part because there are plenty of closed-off assholes IRL. They don't want more closed-off assholes inside games as well.
