Is it a structural wall? Is your wiring brought in from the crawlspace or from above?

It is not a structural wall. Electrical is also not an issue either. My question is...will it look good? Can it also be functional somehow?

The kitchen is on the other side.... What else is on the other side of the wall?

What is this room-an office? If you create a half wall, then does it off-set the other side of the fireplace.

More pics needed please.

The room is a den that we use daily.

Can we see a floor plan of the space?

A Half Wall would look out of place by this fireplace surround which is very heavy in appearance.

either leave it as is or fully remove the wall and expose the side of the brick.

Our realtor suggested removing half the wall (widen the opening) to open up the sight lines. Could we get the same effect with a ”pony” wall that wouldn’t impact the wood floor?

It would look best to remove the whole wall. The floor patching might not be that big of a deal, and the hearth could be lowered to floor level if you feel it's a tripping hazard. If you don't want to deal with any of that, I think the half wall will be okay, and give you additional site lines. Put a piece of matching wood trim on the top of the half wall.

Enlarging the opening would look good. You could pull it back about 2' (6" of wall in front of the fireplace hearth)

It appears you have regular red oak floors and they are laid in a direction that would be easy to replace just a few in that section and refinish.

You can start with doing a pony wall on that 2' section until you save up enough to do the floors, but I would drop the whole wall to pony height as it will look our of place.

Thank you for all the input. We will discuss with our builder and see what he suggests, too.

How about a series of decorative thin posts? That would suggest a wall but also allow for visibility between the two rooms.

I'd do the whole wall or nothing, has the other side where the brick is exposed been a tripping hazard? I wouldn't worry about that. If you're worried about the floors you could do a decorative strip there between the carpet and wood with either tile, brick, etc. Not rocks like this LOL but similar to this...

Don’t bet your lunch in that not being structural. Plus possibly carrying some trunk lines for HVAC, and a plumbing stack.