These are topics that have come up a few times,
Here is a topic I started about the benefits of a Prologue, And here are another few places that discussed the topic of the custom MC's characterization
Character Acting, Demeanor and Personality and
Dragon Age - Next Gen RPGAs for Alignment, Wizards has been trying to downplay that aspect of D&D for a while now, and there is evidence that Larian had it in the game for a long time and only recently took it out before the EA
and having some starting gold to choose equipment with doesn't make total sense considering we're set to zero from the jump