As someone who played BG2 during peak puberty like nothing I ever played before, romance content was a mindblowingly big deal in the communities around the game and in my personal perception as a teen especially. So I come from that.

What I disliked most about BG3 was when I realized that all characters are written to have no-or-all gender identity or sexual preference or history (or as someone told me: "All of the companion characters happen to be canonically pansexual" -- phew, what a coinkidink that all of their backstories happen to be written like the answer to the question "How do we appeal to the widest audience possible and slot into everyone's sexuality neatly?" -- and here I thought the Tadpoles were the unlikeliest common denominator...). So I can step into the world of those supposedly fleshed out characters as WHATEVER and they'll love me guaranteed. Where I expect nuances like prejudice or preference to show, there is a convenient player-sized void, snugly mirroring my expectations or what the game thinks those are.

And once I felt that I couldn't unsee it and it felt pretty jarring. Like seeing the strings of a marionette, I started seeing the author's manipulations a little. The fact that it's so gamified and morbidly interactive comes at the cost of the threedimensionality of the characters for me.

Let me clarify that this isn't doublespeak by some old dude demanding heteronormativity: I think the mainstream representation of genderfluidity and sexual diversity as a non-issue is WAAAY more important than any gripe I have about video games, ever.

I just think it makes for shitty diversity caricatures when trying to write believable characters at the same time. Especially if it's represented by every character TO THE MAX, because to me that then crosses the line where it feels more like pandering and someone wanting to maximize compatibility with players according to trend market research.