I understand that quite a few of you like to know the characters orientation before release so you know "who to go for" when the game starts. I only wonder if that makes the experience more shallow for players. You are choosing who you will romance after a few released wisps of information, the character's looks, and their sexual orientation and gender. Would it not be a more fulfilling experience if you began friendships with these characters, started flirting with them, and then they begin to return your advances? Now I do understand that this is only my personal preference, but unfortunately it is not the only reasons that the pre-release of the sexual orientations bother me. I may be in the minority, but it has always come across as a bit exploitative to use a character's orientation as a selling point. These characters are creations that hopefully have full and developed arcs, and their orientation shouldn't be a defining characteristic of them unless it has majorly effected their lives at some point. When orientations are revealed prior to release chaos ensues over whether or not BioWare is stereotyping, or pandering, or not pandering enough. I believe even the negativity will do wonders for a game's marketing because the controversy gets many people to discuss the game. However much I enjoy the BioWare romance arcs, or do not as it may be, I find that the pre-release of sexual orientations has always rubbed me the wrong way especially for a company that is claimed to be as forward thinking as BioWare.
Let me offer a counterpoint to this - to the LGBT players, not knowing the sexuality of the people we're attracted to is part of our every day life. And for many, it's also a potential risk to their safety to even approach the topic, attempting to find out if someone is interested. While BioWare games are a safer space than many, in that there's no physical risk to the player and the characters tend to let you down fairly easy, not knowing a person's sexuality ahead of time is something that many have trained themselves to not be forward unless they are in an environment that is predominantly non-heterosexual. Particularly given that at least Inquisition provided opportunities to flirt with people who were not actually romance options, or were not of compatible orientations, the existence of a flirt option itself in game isn't enough to indicate that this character is open to advances from the same gender. Knowing ahead of time who is and who isn't available to you as this gender can be a way to reassure the player that they aren't going to be putting themselves out there for the same rejection they face in the physical world.
I do see your point, about judging the characters on their arcs and not on their sexualities, and the kerfluffle that tends to result in the wake of learning [character] is [sexuality]. Honestly, though, I don't think it's possible for them to keep a lid on the characters and who is and is not romanceable. Just not possible - the romances tend to be a draw for BioWare games, as a way to emotionally connect to the characters. Given the mess that was Inquisition's handling of romance reveals, I think it'd just be better to release the list of who's who and who's romanceable by who all at once, so that even if there are people banking on someone being one or another, the sting is dulled by learning who they can romance instead. It's got to be better than the steady drip of reveals that came about from Inquisition, where they told us who was romanceable slowly over the course of time.
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See how easy that was? Six LIs and all of them bi! Do they really have to make any point at all? I mean if you only play a hetero male character would you know that your LI is really bi unless you read it on the forum? No. 
