Wow, this thread has covered a lot of territory, while still managing to be respectful (so far)! If nothing else, it's good that we ARE having this discussion.
This is getting too big to put in forum quotations so I'll just say:
GM4Him, you've clearly put a lot of thought into your response, and I can appreciate where you're coming from, but I have to agree with Dez here. Most people (adults) can tell fantasy from reality, and keep the two apart. In fact my husband and I had an interesting discussion about this last night (after I showed him this thread). I certainly don't get in his way or question his RPG romances every time he plays a game, and he doesn't question mine, because we love each other in the real world and some attractive pixels in a fictional story are no threat to our actual real life relationship. Neither is porn, sexy fan fiction or anything else. If THOSE are the issues causing unrealistic expectations in a relationship in someone's real life, that is not an issue of this game, or the media as a whole, that is an issue for those (hypothetical) people. Also, M/R/etc ratings exist for a reason.
Larian/BG3 is not adding sex scenes to tempt people away from their spouses, they are part of the game because they are part of the story for these particular characters, and part of human life experience, generally speaking. Relationships in video games are not like real life, and I don't think most people expect them to be! They are an escape from reality - like reading a good book, a good game's story like this one draws you in, and allows you to experience/imagine that story and see it through your character's eyes. But it's important to remember that it's just a character, just a fictional story.
