"Total sandbox" is impossible, and "totally linear" is not on the table, but Larian in an effort to marry these two, gives you the option of play pre-made characters with bespoke storylines and with established histories and personalities, or creating your own custom main character who can be a blank slate for the player to write on.
I think this is a laudable endeavor for Larian to attempt but I'm afraid that in trying to be a jack-of-all-trades it won't be able to give us enough of either type of play-style to really make a good story. I feel this way because that's how I felt about DOS:II, I didn't think playing a custom character was worth it storywise, and I didn't think that any individual origin storyline satisfied me from an RPG, 'choose your adventure' stand point.
I find total sandbox games, like a lot of the Rogue-like games that have been coming out, terribly dull, I come to this genre for the interactive storytelling, "emergent gameplay" doesn't really interest me as much, so I'm inclined to want a narrative with a more established character but ideally I would like a game that let's me create a custom character that would be able to interact with the world with the same kind of depth as an origin character.
