Larian made their own world space - They created Rivellon. They *chose* to create a world that had deeply god-supported and god-encouraged racism built into its very core, and they wallowed in that gratuitously, had most characters engage in it openly, and even displayed it in the characters that were treated as a goodly and heroic, and had no-one act like it was anything other than completely acceptable. They made that world - that was their choice. They could have built the world any way they wanted, but that was the way they chose to make it. Our characters were made complicit in this as well - it was a backdrop that we were forced to be a part of and even participate in. And it was disgusting.
I can give Rivellon the benefit of the doubt in that it was made with satire at the core, and - to drive the point home - nobody at all whatsoever was not a target for somebody else's bigotry there, and at no point was it presented as the moral high ground (in fact, the Divine Order in D:OS2 are basically as trasparently in the wrong as they can possibly be). It was a lot more lighthearted back in Divine Divinity (where, at most, you have the stereotypical "dwarves don't like elves and vice versa"), but it did get turned up a notch in Dragon Commander and the OS games. The former does basically serve as a fantasy-fied satire of the real-world ideas and ideologies, with you struggling to stay sane as you try to cater to everyone at the same time so that you don't lose a specific race's support. The latter... I don't really have a problem with them, personally. I guess I am too much of a hardcore WH40K fan, the setting in which every species has at least one slur for another, to be perturbed by it, and I can roleplay my characters in a way where even the more forced moments come with at least some for of rationalization to them. Still, the point there (at least from my perspective) was to showcase that
everyone is in some way prejudiced and flawed, and that nobody is exempt from having those flaws called out - in a satirical, snarky manner which is probably the most non-malicious way to go about the topic in question. There is no deeper nuance and parallels with the real world to look for there.
Point being, it does help to accept the world for what it is rather than actively despise it if it does not flow well with somebody's values, if the media based on it is worth doing it for. It would have been quite difficult to play something like The Age of Decadence or Serpent in the Staglands without that. All deeply subjective, obviously.
