My thoughts on player sexuality in general:
I think it's lazy writing designed to only cater to the people who want to be able to romance everyone regardless of what character they make. I can sort of sympathize with how it came about which is this: Players want to have agency with their characters on what they can do, to include what sexuality they want to have. Therefore, some game studies have concluded that to allow for players to have their agency, they need to have every character open to them. I think this is an illogical and harmful conclusion to reach. A character's sexuality is an integral part of who they are, and knowing what sexuality they have while writing their dialogue options is required for appropriate dialog options. If every character in the game is player sexual, it essentially means every character in the game is bisexual, and their dialogue options have to be bisexual. This becomes very bland and very boring to have every character behave the same way in that regard. It becomes very immersion breaking in fact when you're playing a fantasy game with a huge variety of creatures and locations and classes, but then everyone's sexuality is the exact same copy and paste?
My thoughts on player sexuality in BG3:
BG3 took an already bad idea with player sexuality and decided to also make it far worse by making most if not all of the characters also very horny. Getting laid by pretty much whoever you want on the 2nd night after meeting them is a very strange story arc in an otherwise very well done epic RPG. What's even more confusing to me is that Larian obviously knows how to make a good role playing game. They understand that players like to have progress towards a final end goal, will smaller milestones along the way. The fact that they take this knowledge of how to make a good RPG and just toss it in the trash for their "romance" portion is confusing at best. Winning over the character of your choice in a playthrough should be a long winded affair, it should have little milestones you accomplish to connect to the character, and if you do well, you will eventually be with the person you "love". Having an entire cast of horny bisexuals is incredibly bland and boring.
My recommendations to fix the romance in BG3:
First, go to the drawing board for every NPC and decide what their sexuality will be. Rework their romance stories to incorporate their individual sexuality. Just because a player wants to be a horny bisexual, does not mean they get to force every NPC to also be one. In addition to giving them gender based sexuality, also think about race based sexuality as race in a fantasy game is far more dramatic than just shade of brown. Also think about religious based sexuality and maybe class based. I'll give a couple of examples on how this could work.
Gale: only attacted to female characters; only attracted to human, elf, half-elf; only attracted to characters with at least 1 level in arcane casting class. Gale is essentially still in love with Mystra, and therefore pulling him away from that love is a massive undertaking if the player wants to accomplish it. The only characters who have a chance are females with some near resemblance to the goddess and can use magic themselves. The teaching of magic that is really just sex is replaced with actual teaching of magic with no sex. Gale will offer to, and teach your character unique spells that can only be gained from Gale. Every time your character unlocks the ability to cast the next level of arcane spells, it will unlock another offer from Gale to teach you the unique spell for that level. Eventually, if you build enough friendship with Gale, and learn enough spells from him, you can enter a romantic relationship with the mage.
Astarion: attracted to both make and female characters; attracted to any race; attracted to all classes except those with divinity channels (he doesn't trust those that can turn). Astarion is your typical long-lived hedonist. He has seen far too much pain and suffering in his life and is willing to accept any break to that pain, to include breaks via sexual encounters. However, he has learned about the power that divine classes have over the undead and refuses to risk making himself vulnerable to anyone with that power. Astarion is one of the easiest and earliest characters to romance, however he will never become a character you can form a permanent bond with. Only temporary trists in the sack.
If NPCs get their own unique sexuality, then learning how to win them over becomes an actual challenge and goal. Figuring out how to be with every NPC becomes an epic quest in and of itself for the players rather than just a throwaway task that anyone can do.
