I also want to add that receiving unwanted attention or being icked out isn't the most horrible experience you can ever be subjected to. We are talking about video game NPCs, you can reject them, ignore them or even completely avoid them and kill them if you are so inclined.
I may have a real adverse attitude towards Halsin, on a personal level he gives me the worst ick and I never liked his inclusion as a companion. Annoying as it may be that I can't even reject him from joining the party and that he then inevitably comes on to my character because I spoke to him once, I just reject him and send him back to his corner in camp to whittle his ducks in peace. It is less than 1 minute of dialogue out of a 50+ hour long game.
And I also need to recognize that someone might have the same feelings towards Lae'zel, Karlach, Minthara or Astarion (though in the case of Minthara, if you don't like her, why did you go through all that trouble to recruit her?) who will also come on to the player character on their own initiative without the player making the first move. And in those cases, I like that, as it creates a realistic variety of how different relationship starts and fits the different personalities of the companions. And I'd rather suffer through a few lines of unwanted attention from Halsin than having all those unique and interesting interactions replaced with a simple romance button that the player has to push first which takes me right out of the immersion and makes it into a simple and obvious game mechanic.
Last edited by papercut_ninja; 5 hours ago.
