I vaguely recall Larian citing this bit of criticism on the dichotomy of custom vs origin characters in early interviews and vowing to improve on it, but it's not enough currently.
More than the fact that the origin characters will always have one additional tag with a large number of additional dialogue options, the main problem I see is that the main character lacks a meaningful connection to the game world. Apart from the central conflict of the story, the custom character has no important overarching goal, no real backstory, no actual point of "origin" if you will. He's just kind of... there.
The game *does* give you the Baldurian tag, but never introduces you to the city or your character's place in it. It's even worse for players who are not familiar with the older games, because dialogue choices that reference your past or locations there must be very confusing.
I understand that, at this point, Larian has kind of committed to an intro, so it is unlikely we will see something along the lines of Dragon Age: Origins, but they should introduce some kind of way to solidify our character's identity and give them an anchor to the setting. Class + Background + Race, though at least better than the two tags DOS 2 characters got, do not feel like they're nearly enough.
I do not take issue with the origin characters on a principal basis, even having zero interest in playing them myself, but I can't help but feel that they (once again) soak up resources that would have been better spent on adding meat to a custom main character.
Currently, my character feels like a bit of a non-entity. A mere blank-slate vehicle for me to interact with the game world, not unlike what I would expect from an MMO. My hope is that for the final version of the game Larian will introduce elements, be they dialogue options, character creation details or anything else, that will help me get emotionally invested in a character of my own, rather than the pre-packaged ones they provide.
+1, a personal prologue, before the tadpole, could help introducing the character. A personal quest for only custom could help too. Gorion ward had Candlekeep before the adventure started.
