In response to Malaconia, I registered an account to add to this discussion.
I agree with this sentiment. It's very jarring when I am playing my character whom I clearly have in mind as being a straight male and all of a sudden am constantly being hit on and pursued by the male characters with whom I had a normal male friendship. It just doesn't feel normal. I don't think the vast majority of gay men would go after a male friend who is clearly straight and hasn't shown any interest in them.
At the same time, players shouldn't be locked out of pursuing their ideal love interest simply because of the gender they chose for their character. Another issue is the crazy amount of horniness/ease at which characters want to have sex with the player. I think the best workaround for these two issues would be, in short:
- Allow all companions to be romanced by the player given high enough approval and player initiation
- Make romance a separate path to go on with a companion that diverges from a standard friendship path, and make it initiated by the player
To extrapolate, there should be the "friendship path", which the game defaults to upon reaching high approval with a companion. Only when the player initiates the "relationship path" through specific, clearly stated/worded dialogue choices should the romance/flirting scenes begin to happen. This would make it so the player can select those characters whom they would be attracted to, rather than just have them choose through every character throwing themselves at the player, which feels totally unnatural. In this way, varying player sexuality could be addressed in a more natural way while still allowing for a wide array of choices.
Choosing to pursue a relationship in the game should also be more of a goal and a buildup; it should not be some easy task of simply asking the companion "do you want to have sex?" - especially given that the companion is normally the one initiating this in BG3. Romance should feel like a task of first understanding the character, learning about them, impressing them/growing closer to them, and then finally realizing love. You know, akin to real life romance, hahaha. There should be bumps in the road, decisions to make involving the companion, and then finally a moment where you two find feelings for one another/confess your building feelings.
Shadowheart comes to mind as being a romance done (kind of?) well. While at present, things progress very quickly in the first part of act 1, the relationship with Shadowheart then slows down, and the player character and Shadowheart grow together and learn things about her during act 2, only for her to finally come to want a relationship with the PC at the end of act 2. I don't think any other character is like that; they all want to have sex with/start a relationship with the PC right off the bat if given the chance. Granted, Shadowheart will kiss you and clearly be attracted to you quite early on, but her case is still the best out of the cast. Of course the moment act 3 begins, things then jump off a cliff with Shadowheart and the rest of the cast turning into lifeless mannequins with one or two notable lines of dialogue per hour, but still, the buildup is something that feels like a journey and an achievement.
To digress a bit, I think the companion system in this game has massive potential. There could be a wide array of non-romantic scenes which happen with your companions as you journey along. These could be arguments/discussions between the party on what is going on, scenes in which you connect with companions/hang out (varying depending upon where you are and what you've done), and overall flavor to add to the feeling that you are in a party of fresh acquaintances with wildly varying personalities and motivations who are embarking on a perilous journey together. An example that comes to mind is the short fight between Shadowheart and Lae'zel. It gives the characters some personality and makes the group feel like just that: a group of individuals with varying motivations and personalities. Sadly, scenes like that are few and far between, but I don't think they would be hard to add in whatsoever.
It would also add to replayability as the scenes you would be seeing wouldn't be the same 2-3 scenes on repeat every single playthrough. All this not mentioning that, as of now, companion scenes inevitably are just lead-ups to romance if not romance scenes themselves.
The point to playing this game in singleplayer is the companions. When the story is over, the biggest impression left on a player will be those of their story with their companions. Perhaps I am alone in this opinion, but I feel that the companions, even in the state they are in now, add tremendously to the game experience. I felt the same about Divinity 2, a game where I still will go back and listen to character musical themes and think about their personalities and their stories just because I loved their characters so much.
Having the companions' relationship with the player character progress so quickly only to suddenly come to a standstill takes away from the experience with them and diminishes the feeling of remembering your journey alongside them. In short, it makes them feel robotic when the potential of further fleshing them out is certainly there.
While Larian has an astonishingly great game on their hands, there is still a lot of work done to push it to the true masterpiece levels it is totally capable of achieving, and I am certain this is one of the places on which they could improve.
