But this is a Larian game, if you are not playing an Origin Character, you are playing the game wrong. You would think having a custom character name show up as Tav would tell you everything Larian wants you to know about your character. The PC is not the hero of this story, we are the sidekick unless your choose to be a protagonists, i.e. an Origin Character.
How is the PC not the hero of the story whether you choose an Origin character or not? There are some heavy hints that the entire story arc is about whether you're going to accept the power of the Illithid tadpole and become a powerful evil force in the world, or resist it and fight the Mind Flayers.
Isn't that enough? It allows players to choose an Origin character or build a blank slate to follow that story line.
Because compared to Origin characters, Custom characters fall flat, and are just cardboard cutouts with zero personality or history. That was a major criticism of OS2 and it remains here. Too many resources go into making all these Origin characters playable and making it so you can see their story in "first person view", and Custom characters are left blank. It leaves a sour taste just calling the main character "custom". In every RPG it's just "main character" or a name, in this one its "oh custom". That to me just comes off weird and terrible. Because every Origin character can be played, they allll have to be special in some way, which means no one is special, and ofc...same goes for Custom even more. Custom is nothing.
Before you are on the ship, your character has zero history. Yes you get your "race" dialogues, but that's not unique. That's race dialogue, that's not YOUR character dialogue. They have no history and just "appear" out of nowhere when the game starts it looks like. Every CRPG does something to make the main character have some sort of background, a link to the world. Even pillars 1 (where u are a blank slate), has the character traveling to a new place and a mandatory NPC asks you for your reasoning, which gives your character a place in the world. An actual place, not some headcanon stuff and some elaborate history players can make. All CRPGS/RPGS do it. Even fallout NV (which is considered a damn good rpg by majority) has some backstory, like you being a courier, outside of that it's a clean slate.
