As for the draw behind making NPCs playersexual, people have literally already answered that in this very thread. We are not going to get a large number of companions, certainly not enough to satisfy everyone's preferences. Making your companions playersexual is a *compromise*. It allows anyone playing any race/gender combo to romance their choice of companion on any given playthrough.

In this particular case it's literally not possible to win. If the dev team make enough companions to satisfy everyone, then there will be (more) complaints that the party is not big enough, that that the team is trying to force replayability by piling up NPCs and not actual gameplay content. If the dev team give us a small number of companions with restricted race/gender preferences then there will be complaints that the options are too limited. So they went for the compromise.

I don't know about you, but I have never once played a romance game (or game with romance in it) and actually expected it be a realistic representation of real-life romance.