Thank you Niara, your response was very thoughtful and I genuinely appreciate the good will that's coming from you. It made me do a little introspection and come to the conclusion that I'm overreacting to this, but not for the reasons you propose. The honest truth is that I'm frustrated beyond belief with Larian by now, especially after this PFH. I know the disgust with the bear scene is fundamentally just that - disgust and shock. Larian's priorities clearly don't align with mine, I feel angry at myself for putting my trust in them and them using romance, sex, character cosmetics, psychopathic power fantasy, sheer game size, juvenile humour and to top it all off a full-on bestiality scene to generate more shock and spectacle while their game has systems that have been underwhelming or completely broken for three years was just the final straw for me. I used to be genuinely excited for BG3, and now I'm not. I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that this game just isn't for me and I am getting neither my money nor emotional investment back.
I admit, I feel rather similarly. I don't mind the bear thing per se - I think it is stupid and immature and shows Larian (and by association all of us) in a bad light, but I was never going to be romancing Halsin (or anyone else) anyway. No, so my objection is that they spend a whole lot of time on this trash and neglect other aspects of the game. Sven actually commented that getting the romances in had been a huge effort on Larian's part. And yet the writing remains talentless and shallow, the combat is dominated by stupid gimmicks, many systems broken and the NPC companions are awful.
I will play it because I bought the EA, but it has really warned me off buying an EA ever again.
