Anyway. To address the original post: I disagree.
I'm not looking for a real world social agenda when I play a fantasy game. I'm looking for a world full of interesting cultures, and I expect those cultures to clash. Conflict is a good thing in storytelling.
Personally, I'd like to see more conflict. I find the portrayal of races and cultures in BG3 to be one of the worst things about the game. Specifically, once you get to the city, the races become costumes more than cultures. The city is populated with NPCs that seem to have races chosen by random. If that's the way it's going to be approached, then just remove the races because they're no longer bringing anything to the table.
I want to see the devilish side of tieflings. I want to see them portrayed as dangerous, with devilish powers... like they have. I want monster races like hobgoblins to be monstrous. I want to see drow in all their wicked glory.
In short, I'd like to see more culture and more clashing of culture. I want the races to matter in the story.
Yes, there should be much more racism and racial conflict.
I'd understand people's concerns if the game would portray light skinned humans and darker skinned humans as being different. But that's not the case. Instead we have fantasy races with no real world connection.
Well, the 'your people are vagrant cutthroats' talk Astarion gives Gandrel is quite similar to anti-Romani racism here in Europe. Which Larian writers being mostly European, I doubt they are unaware, considering that Gur as a fantasy folk share some similarities with Romani people. Gur are portrayed as nomadic, dark skinned people, sometimes with prophetic abilities. I don't play tabletop, but it makes me wonder whether the way human ethnicities are written in dnd really have no 'real world connections'.
Now originally Astarion was hinted to be a corrupted and evil magister, who made crooked rulings, so you could say it was at least in character for him. Larian removed his evil past, but left his little speech.
