I hear you and it's a good point you make. It's just that the part of the equation that kind of rankles me is the fact that we have a number of party members with fully developed backstories that we can choose to play as, and I feel as though if you're going to offer those as choices then there should be something that allows custom player characters to stand on the same level. I'll be glad to hear that I'm wrong and I missed something, but what exactly is the benefit of playing a custom character with a narratively irrelevant background when compared to playing characters with fully fleshed out backgrounds? I may be overestimating the amount of attention the companion backgrounds are going to get in the actual game but I do think, especially considering at least some of these companions will present unique stories to experience in gameplay (looking at you Asterion) then a custom character should bring something equivalent to the table.
I'm aware that as a video game these things will have greater limitations, but based on everything else they're doing for this game it seems as though those limitations aren't beyond their capacity to address. They're going to the trouble of accounting for every instance of running water that could do damage to Asterion and allowing you to speak to animals. This doesn't feel like a significantly greater devotion of resources than either of those things. Now let me be clear that I don't think I know better than them, if they've decided that this isn't where they want to devote resources, I accept that and at this point i have no meaningful doubt that this game will be good, and if it isn't good, then this background issue certainly won't be the reason why. I'm just voicing my feelings as to why I think this is an issue they should rethink. If the product they put out for early access doesn't feel satisfying with regard to backgrounds in Early Access, I'll say so as part of my feedback. If they decide not to take that criticism on board then I'll just accept that it wasn't something they were able to suitably accomplish, because all the insane stuff they're putting into the game so far tells me that only genuine inability would lead to them not implementing such a roleplay-important feature.
