This is extremely shallow, and honestly smacks of an attempt at scoring points with the social justice crowd.
I would argue that Larian is trying to score points with the horny crowd more than the social justice crowd. In AAA RPGs, for better or worse, it is now ~expected that players can romance their companions. And making every companion equally romanceable is the easiest (one could say laziest since there are no differences in the romance dialogue for different gender-PCs) way to ensure players can romance every companion.
[...] in this game, not only is every member of your party a valid match for you, they aggressively seek to engender a relationship with you. This is extremely shallow [...] People are, by and large, different, they have different beliefs, different orientations, and personalities. Some people are shy, some are outgoing, some are phobic, and others are introverted.
Agreed that:
- players should have to initiate flirting/romance with at least some of the companions. E.g., Lae'zel and Astarion could come onto you, but the player might need to initiate with Gale/Wyll/SH.
- companions should have preferences, with dialogue that reflects them. E.g., Gale and Wyll are straight-presenting (dialogue and backstory), so a male-PC would have to initiate flirting with them and there'd be lines like: "I've never felt this way about a man before."
I'd be fine with some race/gender restrictions, but this requires sufficient NPCs. At least 8, for 1 straight of each gender, 1 gay of each gender, and 4 bi/playersexual. For example, In DAI I had no problems with Solas only wanting to romance female elves, and the companion ensemble was large enough that players still had a choice of romance options even with some NPCs being straight/gay. Though I do know a person who was very unhappy that Cassandra was straight...
