I do see very meaningful, powerful romance in their friendship ("quest to getting laid" is really not it, at all), and consider LiS altogether to be one of the most touching, authentic love stories I've experienced - certainly in terms of video games. The disregarding of Warren romantically in my mind plays into that romance more than contrasting it.

But I do also understand where you are coming from, and I can get behind the notion here.

I would argue where media in general has cheapened romance, LiS heightens the romantic impact and significance for its narrative wonderfully and is if anything a great direction for romance in video games to go from. It's a natural and believable romance, and one that is not self-revolving or build up in the story artificially; it sits self-evidently at its core and is developed effortlessly through its course. Especially refreshing is that it is a same-sex friends-to-lovers romance where you really feel and believe that it is first-and-foremost a true, close friendship - the romatical extension of that love thus establishing itself naturally from there, not as something that feels forced. And that the romance, their bond and love, is simultaneously very significant to the narrative (pretty much sits at its fundament and is what much of it revolves all around), but also a nice kind of quiet and subtle in its expression in and between the characters themselves that is fitting for their personalities and the context of both their respective backgrounds and their dynamic with each other. It's a romance that is expressed both in those small gestures, the seemingly small moments, the words ands looks, the softness of the emotionality and tentativeness... but also the tremendous acts and struggles fought and won, the obstacles overcome, through and for that bond. Transcending time and tragedy, defying the universe, overcoming obstacles from within and without, together, for each other, thanks to each other.

...That all said, that bond does not have to be romantical. It can be all that I've said it is as a friendship love - a sisterly love, if you will. While I do not see it that way, and see an outright romantical quality of their relationship (as well as a meaning in that quality in distinction to a "just-friendship"), I do not think friendship is something lesser. At all. And you are right, there is value in the idea that friendship specifically as a non-romantical bond of love can be that powerful. (But then at some point, the lines between the types of love start to blur as well; the only meaningful distinction between the two then is only an emotional one in the person itself, and as such not subject to any interpretation or message, but in the case of fiction more down to whether the individual reader (here: player) actually feels a connection of that kind between the two.)