Anyway, this game allows you to ignore the origin characters if you want, and have your own custom party. You just miss out on the character interactions/conversations, and have to have them all in your head - or with your friends on Discord while playing together in multiplayer. That is fine.
This is NOT fine. Not even in the slightest.
You can flippantly say "You just miss out on the character interactions/conversations, and have to have them all in your head" but this is absolutely unacceptable to me. Not having those interactions and conversations between my PC and my companions and among my companions means the game is not a Baldur's Gate game.
I only said that in the context of not using the NPC companions if you didn't want them, and making up your own custom party of your own characters, for example to play with friends.
Of course a Baldur's Gate game is going to involve a varied cast of companions - it already has several wonderfully voiced, well written characters, with more coming.
I'm not talking about the companions or the party. I would never play with custom companions when NPC companions are available. I'm talking about my PC. My custom PC in my non-custom party, where my custom PC is going to feel completely pointless and irrelevant compared with my party companions.
But also, on a secondary related note, I profoundly disagree that we currently have a varied cast of well written companions. There is no variation at all in good versus evil. As someone who would want only a strictly "good" aligned party, I have no choices at all (No, Wyll and Gale are not good-aligned; at best they're neutral). And worse, all the current crop of companions are utterly distasteful and annoying, and I would not care to go adventuring with them as my companions. I would want a full party of all good-aligned companions who are also"nice and friendly and a pleasure to hang out with. But I am also not going to be willing to accept empty-suit custom companions. So then there is no way (at least at present) for me to play the game.
