Another thing is that Alister is definitely gay. Sure, at the time the game came out it was perfectly normal to write men that thought so goddamn highly of their male best friends that they're literally the only thing they talk about but that shit has aged as such that there's fewer and fewer heterosexual explanations for it that still track to the modern audience. Maybe he was the most asexual ace of all time and Kaden really was both just a friend and his most important interpersonal relationship but you could also just read him as gay. With the way male friendship culture has changed in reaction to homosexuality in the last decade i think that more and more people are gonna read it that way and that also you're gonna start getting people who are genuinely shocked that it's not an outright canon thing.
In so many words, Alister is gay-coded and people are gonna keep picking up on that shit.
