The worry for me is that other game devs see the success of BG3 and try to emulate it, thinking (perhaps not wrongly) that its success was due to the sexualisation of the story. It might be hard to find RPGs in the future that present a more balanced view of sex or just let us adventure in peace without all the dating rubbish.
That ship sailed long ago.
Romance/sex options are part of the modern CRPG genre. People play as much for the story as the game mechanics and that includes the personal story and relationships of the protagonist/their character. It doesn't always include romance and sex, but it very often does. Not everyone is interested in that aspect, but lots of players are. I think it's now expected for CRPGs as much as character customization and wearing different outfits usually are.
BG3 is of course a sequel to the Bioware games, and Bioware really led the pack on all this. It wasn't much of a thing in BG, but BG2 is one of the first good examples of romance in a CRPG, and we also shouldn't ignore how games have evolved since. BG3 is kind of a successor to the Dragon Age games as well as the original BG games, just as Dragon Age was a successor to BG1 & 2.
Certainly Larian lent quite hard on that side in their promotion, but it's still quite a small part of the game really, and still optional. How much time do we actually spend in romance dialogues and cut scenes? Half an hour maybe in about a hundred hour play through? For some of the companions at least, it's not quick either. It took me most of the game to get into Sharty's pants.
Aside from the promotion, I suspect much of the complaint is due to two things. Making the companions "player-sexual" and having many of them initiate romance/sexual encounters. The "player-sexual" thing is basically a game mechanic. It's to give everyone all the options. There's upsides and downsides to that approach, but it's what they went with and I have no problem with it. Having some characters pursue you isn't a bad thing story-wise, but it does mean you can't completely ignore it. Put together and it means you hit a point a dozen or so hours in, where approval ratings can start kicking things off with several characters all around the same time, including of course characters that don't match the player's sexual orientation.
Gale is an obvious example. It's super easy to get a load of approval early on by playing the hero route. Save a couple of kids in the Grove, be understanding about his situation and you're basically there. Then if you want to do a bit of best bud bonding with him teaching you some magic, the narrator suddenly tells you the moment feels "sensual". It didn't bother me personally, but I can certainly understand how some players might just think "wait, WTF?".
I think the overall level of sex and romance is fine. What I've seen of it is generally handled well, some of it exceptionally well. But there are moments, when the game suddenly throws it at you without warning, that could probably have been handled a bit better. Halsin trying to sleaze his way in to your relationship could be taken as either quite funny or massively inappropriate, depending on the player. Particularly if you've gone for a slow burning love story over dozens of hours, like with Shadowheart. Also turning characters down often seems a bit blunt and it's not clear that they won't hate you for it. I found Wyll's reaction quite hilarious. It was just a dance man, get over yourself!
If you want an example of an RPG where romance and relationship stuff really is inescapable, look at the Witcher games. Let's skip the crude way it was handled in the original and move on to the hugely popular and critically acclaimed Witcher 3. Geralt's relationship with Triss and Yennefer (and Shani with the DLC) is completely built into the story, right from the very beginning when you are looking for Yennifer. It's your very first quest objective. You can choose to play celibate Geralt, but you can't ignore your past relationships with them. The Witcher 3 was probably the previous massively successful RPG widely hailed as a step up from what's come before, as BG3 is now.
