know. for me as a woman. there are no particularly handsome men in the game. gale is a silly face. although I like his story. Astarion is a lustful rough corpse. and Will is a man with one eye, such a Scandinavian father of the gods. in my first playthrough, all this romance was a pain in my choice. and then I accidentally opened a weaving scene with gale ... and she tried me on with this wizard
Yeah, Felicia Day provided similar feedback. She didn't see any of the male companions as particularly attractive. She called Gale "a Bad Burt Reynolds look alike.." or something. She mentioned that Astarion came off as "far more creepy than sexy".
I honestly don't see any of the companions as being particularly attractive except maybe Shadowheart - and she has a pretty standoffish personality.
Overall I think this is a good thing. It partially subverts the expectation that companions are there to be a "all you can eat sex smorgasbord" for players.
But here is where things get dicey - is it a problem that everyone is bisexual in Faerun (or at least all the companions), because the subtext suggest the opinion that sexuality isn't a fixed thing. To be sure, some people are bisexuals, but most people are either gay or straight - unless things work differently in the forgotten realms.
However, this also could be sending the message that sexuality is irrelevant! Which is pretty woke and makes a compelling point as well. That it is counterproductive to build characters based around a sexual orientation.
Or is it even much simpler than that - where the devs know that players are conditioned to have the expectation that they can romance companions and they simply said "Ok, have fun, they will sleep with anyone...literally a heartbeat is the requirement and maybe not even that in the case of Astarion - knock yourselves out"
