I agree that it is totally a personal preference. I don’t agree that a fantasy video game adventure needs sex though. Can anyone seriously say for example that The Lord of the Rings is worse off for not having graphic sex in it?
LotR is a morally uncomplicated fable of good vs evil with no grey areas and characters that are more archetype paragons than people. I say this as someone who loves Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was writing a mythology, and a heavily Christian influenced one at that. Baldur's Gate is set in the Forgotten Realms, a morally grey world with all the trappings of the real world, and characters who are broadly speaking just regular people. You think there wouldn't be a Brothel or 20 in the whole of the city of Baldur's Gate when we've seen them in previous games like Neverwinter Nights? There are already plenty of sexless RPGs out there for people to play who don't want to see nudity or anything like that. Fantasy adventure games don't need lots of things. They don't need high fidelity AAA graphics, but BG3 is investing a ton of its budget into visuals and animations. They don't need multiple races to choose from, but Larian is putting the effort in to make sure NPCs in the world respond differently based on your race and even subrace. Fantasy adventure games don't need classes, you could easily be playing a game where you're forced to be a sword-user. They don't need to have blood or murder or death either. We could have Pokemon combat where the animation involves your character bouncing slightly in the air and a white flash that results in the enemy hp draining.
Saying an RPG doesn't need something really isn't the point. Its an option that you aren't going to be forced to engage in. Even if it were for the sole purpose of titillations, why is that a problem if that's what the devs choose to add to a game? If a significant number of players want that type of content in their fantasy games, and the abundance of NSFW mods in other fantasy RPGs and their popularity gives me full confidence that they do, why fuss over it? If I don't want to play as a halfling cleric. I don't have to. If you don't want to see a nipple, you don't have to. We really should be past this sort of argument at this point. It's an adult game for adults, and is labelled as such.
Edit: Just to be clear, it's fine if you don't want to engage in the content. Not everything is for everyone. I guess I just find it a little frustrating how some people are talking like this kind of stuff shouldn't be in the game at all. Games like this should be about crafting your own narrative and responding to the world around you as you see fit. I'm personally glad that Larian is willing to push the boundaries of acceptable content in video games, especially since I remember all the controversies in the past and moral panics surrounding The Elder Scrolls Oblivion with a bugged piece of armor in the code that removed female tops that affected the ESRB rating, or the San Andreas Hot Coffee controversy. Not every game that's made has to be PG-13. I'm just trying to make the case that sexual content has just as much of a place in a fantasy RPG as all the violent content that we accept as a given.
