Time4Tea: I am liberal/progressive leaning and I am all for creating something new and different, but I also believe that well-established fictional IPs should be to some extent preserved in the way their original creators intended. If you want something new and different then
go and make something new. Or, has the current generation lost the ability to be creative and create new content? Is it all they can do to 're-imagine' existing IPs, in an erosive and derivative way?
In 5 pages of posts from both sides of this debate, you're the only one hitting on the real point with this right here. It's the truth that the people putting forward a view hope people don't realize, and most often it isn't. And before anyone decides to go into attack mode, this can, and is, done with any "controversial" subject matter/topic/social issue/etc. in any consumable product of any kind by the ones creating it from any viewpoint.
FR and BG are brands that have existed and been written and portrayed a certain way for decades. Comics, tv shows, and movies are further examples of this in play. The creators of these games, shows, movies, books, products are purposely not creating something new and distinctive, and very much prefer to take an existing brand, character, story to incorporate their agenda into. The question of why is very simple - creating something new and incorporating things that some portion (I'm not here to debate how much, but the fact they do this tells you which way they're hedging their bets) of the target audience will find objectionable will make it a financial failure. Doing it with an already well-established brand that has a built-in consumer base is safer. Anyone who doesn't understand that at the end of the day, all posturing and debates on either viewpoint aside, is fooling themselves.
Larian, DC, Warner Brothers, Target, Budweiser, every company in the world has one core objective that renders everything else nothing more than "nice to haves" - profitability. DC didn't make an all new character and give them a comic to write about a teenage boy exploring being gay, they took Robin, who had been written for decades as heterosexual and having a girlfriend, and did it, and there is only one reason - money. Because the brand of Robin has a built in consumer base and the calculation, the hope, the risk worth taking in their estimation is they'll keep more of that existing audience then they would in finding a new base audience for something new. It's nothing more than a business decision as to what will make more money at the end of the day no matter how else you want to dress it up. These companies aren't non-profits promoting social or progressive issues and viewpoints, they're companies calculating how to make the most money. There's a perception that promoting one side or the other of some of these issues somehow signals a positive stance morally, and some companies are doing this as well, but I assure you, it's still in a very calculated way.
That's the true tipping point here in expressing yourself as a consumer, and it is the basis of the OP's choice to voice his opinion if he should so choose. Your money is ultimately what guides what companies do. Same goes for everyone who posted afterwards. Arguing the fine points of the matter as has been done in numerous posts in this thread is so often what happens today. There is no more agree to disagree in our world of out of control social media as someone else articulated. It only leads to social divisions, which companies in large part care nothing about.
The only other thing I'd add is directed to anyone defending the bear sex - if you're truly in favor of something like that in a game, a movie, a book, anything at all, people are going to disagree. There is no way possible to demonstrate any need to include something that, universally, people would find highly objectionable. Arguing against censorship is fine, but come on people, find a hill to die on that is at least worthy of your time and energy.