@redqueen

I understand the rational behind the playersexual approach. It is simpler. What I question is Larian going down that path when they clearly went the difficult path in many other places before. We could have had a more mature, adult, way of handling romance. Having some preset biases / preferences would makes a lot more sense. And I don't think it would be homophobic to set Gale as 100% straight human/elf/half elf only while Astarion would be 100% anything for instance.

On the broader topic not having normal friendship options is a glaring absence and damage immersion. At a minimum putting a [romance] tag gating the romance dialog would be an easy fix and a good feedback for the Dev team.

Deeper, and therefore unlikely to be done, approval and exual attraction are two different concepts: you can't be friend with someone you don't like but you could definitely sh#g someone you don't (given enough alcohol), oddly enormous enough bg3 childishly ties these two concepts. That's sad given the level of quality in other areas.