I want to make 4 custom characters as a default feature because honestly I don't give a rat's ass about pre-generated ones, and as for "the game is scripted around them" is a partial truth. The game is scripted around the dialogue tag system, which in effect, is tied to the pre-generated characters; but can be applied to your own.
Yea actually that's a good point..... the whole origin story could be tags only which you can select.
But you know its prob best to keep them race and sex restricted by this point since the dialogue reflects that, it could be a lot of work to change that now.
But honestly you could keep everything the same and just allow for more customisation of appearance and stats for companion characters and that would be fine wouldn't it? With the added ability to select 4 none origin characters also at start. I think the devs would feel bad though after putting a lot of work into the origins :P