But, the result was actually that, if you were playing a homosexual male, you had one single romance option available to you, and that one only if you were comfortable breaking him up with his current (female) partner. Heterosexual female characters had 2 possible options only (again, one of which involves breaking up the male from his current partner), while heterosexual male PCs had 5 options, and homosexual females had 4 (one involving required relationship breaking). It ended up being deeply dissatisfying, *despite* the game designers going to great lengths to try to include NPC characters of varied and different tastes and preferences. You simply can't cater to a fair spread of experience and options for everyone if you hard lock the romance options to pre-fixed sexualities.
I agree with this. I personally feel that until we get a diverse mix of writers writing diverse characters, writers always tend to miss something in their portrayal of non-heterosexual characters. The characters often times can be summarized by a trope (bisexual rogues), have wayyyy too much of their personal story hinge on their sexuality as if it was their only personality trait, or straight up have less content than the heterosexual characters (limited as side characters). I just want normal characters who happen to be gay or bi. I feel that writers are able to write believable non-heterosexual characters when they write them NORMAL first. Instead of applying tropes, tokenizing them for representation, or fixating on niche focus groups that are only a small representation of an already minority community.
It's why playersexuality works - because the player gets to interpret the companions' sexualities and the writers get to just write characters.
I've watched Bioware wrestle with this for years and also have a personal bone to pick with them in this regard. Time and time again, they will have a strong female character and make her straight only (not that making strong female characters straight is bad, but that it's the only way Bioware knows how to write them). I could name you the character in each of their games, but the straw that broke the camels back for me is Cora from Andromeda. While I'd only feel comfortable arguing that characters like Handmaiden, Aveline, Cassandra could at least be bi - Cora on the other hand seemed to lend itself better to being written as a lesbian. But again, this strong female character only likes men and her whole plot line involves her deferring to said male main character, despite her being overqualified and better equipped at the job. They basically neutered her, and in the context of a straight romance it almost summarized how the company seems to approach characters like these.
When writers write non-heterosexual characters its almost as if they think there's only one way to write them. While even in BG3 there are some tropes, at least I get to choose how I want to interpret it. If you prefer to think of Gale and Wyll as straight and their propositions are just drunken compliments of your good deeds, you are actually able to play that way. If you think Gale took "married to science" too literally or think Wyll's attraction to women is probably tainted at this point, you can also choose to interpret it that way. You are supposed to play with what is and isn't stated to craft the game how you want. You are not limited, and that enhances the game.
I don't get your argument. How is establishing a character's sexuality and then throwing it away 'cause reasons any better than not establishing anything and running with whatever?
I guess an argument could be made about Gale being pansexual, but Wyll isn't in any way, shape or form a bisexual Alistair, aka a character who could realistically run with whatever because he's written in such a way to leave his sexuality moderately open, he's a full on Dorian from Inquisition.
Wyll's whole backstory is all about a woman and in the game itself he flirts in his very banter with the female companions (both points are also true for Gale), but then it's all just thrown aside for convenience's sake. There's just a clash in writing and mechanics, just like in other elements of this game's plot.
