And so what if they do?
They are based around similar characters from older games. Viconia and Edwin were my favourite characters in the original games, Viconia especially because you could actually teach her how to become good if you wanted over the course of the game.
By far my favourite character in NWN was Qara, while she had a Chaotic Neutral alignment, her personality verged more towards Neutral Evil if and when you didn't agree, trust or understand her.
On all accounts, Minsc was always my least favourite character, simply good and dumb, and Jaheira was nothing less than a whiny old hag with a temper tantrum. Aerie was a brilliantly written good character with a strong story arc, but she was very picky and needed constant nannying and appeasing to remain on good terms.
The worlds depicted in RPG fantasty games are ones that would give rise to many more evil characters thsn you get in real life - just imagine if you were actually captured by mindflayers, or constantly besieged by trolls, or approached by an actual succubus and offered to make a deal of a lifetime with the devil. You are going to be very easily tempted away from 'good' as many of the characters in these fantasy realms often are.
Games are not meant to depict real world standards of good and evil, and everytime they pander to such things as the recent removal of inherently evil races the lore and fantasy aspects suffer and diminish greatly.
I mean, yeah, you're right, and I wasn't trying to say I don't want any 'evil' characters in my games. Quit the contrary. Lae'zel for example paints a nice picture of your average githyanki warrior, filling a similar narrative role as Viconia did for the drow, in a good way. Shadowheart is a priestess of Shar, and Astarion is a vampire-spawn. All of them are solid characters, and their personalities are justified.
But two things bother me here, and as a precaution let me just say this all boils down to personal preference.
First, the characters in BG3 are snarky and arrogant. Again. It annoyed me to death in Divinity, it annoys me all the same in BG3. Special shout out to Astarion, who's personality is like the writers at Larian merged Red Prince and Sebille to make the most punchable face in the Forgotten realms. In the meantime, I found every single evil companion in Pathfinder: Kingmaker genuinely likeable and fun to travel with. Hell, even Edwin and Viconia were fun to have around due to their comical arguments with everybody else. Don't see much of that in BG3 yet, but we'll see in time.
Second, the aforementioned three are the first companion characters you get to interact with, and all of them are very clearly on the evil side of the alignment spectrum. It's like the game is subtly pushing you to play evil, or at least neutral. It's not what I personally enjoy doing in rpgs, at least not on a first playthrough anyway, and all I want is more options.
Also, I strongly agree with your last point. Alignment is an important part of the lore, and I'm not happy about it slowly getting erased.
