Hey, I am all for player sexuality. And while I really do appreciate that Larian makes our companion come to us instead of "forcing" us to pick romantic options in order to trigger future romances, I really do wish there would be more obvious "friendzone"-options early on. Some dialogues that very obviously are meant for those who do not want to pursue romance with that particular companion - AND PLEASE, LARIAN. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don't wait until the game has the character standing there in front of you with flowers in hand.
If I had to pull an example, I'd bring DA:O to the discussion. I'll say that I absolutely loved the way one could handle Leliana - she hinted at liking your character physically, and you could just give her some responses that were so obvious friendzoning and her approval rating would move from the romantic flags ("interested" etc) to friend ("warm"), yet there seemed to be no harm done. She seemed happy with it and honestly, she seems a bit ... Spectacular to hide feelings if there were any so I don't believe I got deceived. Nor did I lose any approval rating (quite the opposite, I gained approval). Everybody walks out happily!
... HOWEVER, when it came to Alistair... Oh dear god, it was a fucking disaster. I thought of him as a silly brother so I got kinda weirded out when he started flirting. He started dropping romantic hints and I had no way to turn them down without being mean, so I picked as neutral options as possible - and well... Then there finally was the time when he came there asking for more and neutral options lead to kissing and intense music. I struggled for far longer than I am willing to admit to attempt to find a way to shut the romance down without being a dick - but honestly? It seems like it just wasn't possible. In the end I had to just tell him "yeah no, we're just friends" as he asks if he believes I could ever develop feelings for him (with the saddest puppy eyes I've ever seen in a game), ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS - NOT JUST ONCE (and this MUST have been a bug). I am not sure what went wrong with my play-through, but I just kept getting romance scenes with Alistair through-out the entire night when I was playing and I felt so horribly bad for shutting him down over and over.
I agree that Leliana was very well done, especially how you can be a good friend with her or move into something more, but it wasn't this abrupt shift. Even though my DA:O character was involved with Allistair, I was sorely tempted to have her ditch him for Leliana just because I liked her character so much.
I think the issues with camping and companion interaction queuing in BG3 make it hard for the game to convey companion interest in stages. I was actually surprised a few days ago by a dialogue with Astarion that I hadn't encountered before where he expresses his interest (without actually propositioning your character) and your character can express interest back or shut it down.
Maybe they do have those kinds of conversations planned in for everyone and they're just really easy to miss. However, if they don't, then a couple conversations like that would make things seem a lot less abrupt when you get to the party night. It would also allow your character to let the companion know if they're not interested (or not yet), and that would flag them not make future overtures. However, if they did do it that way, then I think they should still leave it open to pick things up again later (assuming you weren't rude about it). It might be easy to miss certain cues otherwise (or you might just be playing a romantically clueless character).
