This has nothing to do with being a fan of vampires or the horror genre. Or actually it does. I love a good vampire story and horror movies, especially fantasy or sci-fi. Which is precisely why I don't want some half-assed vampire/werewolf companions slapped on top of BG3 storyline just because someone thought a vampire character would be "cool". The vampires need to be done right or not at all. They need to be an important faction in the story of BG3. Werewolves would certainly be pushing it too far when we already have the vampire on top of the actual Mind Flayer / Githyanki / Absolute storyline and dead gods and whatnot.
I really hope Larian can keep it all together and not try to tell too many stories at the same time.
I don't tend to think that vampires or werewolves need to be limited to the horror genre. They're fine in other genres. That said, any story of vampires or werewolves is going to feel extra unless you're playing Astarion at which is becomes a central plot point. Which does come to my repeat issues with D&D which is:
"behold this companion/NPC who has an interesting and unique back story which you can't build as a player no matter how hard you try because they're playing a type of creature not available to players"
It's a bit more tolerable in video games because there's practical limits to consider. And fortunately there's a lot of flex in possible lineages and classes to hit a lot of story types in the TTRPG (for example, you could play a story similar to Astarions by using the dhampir lineage from Van Richten's).
I'm unlikely to take on Astarion mostly because I don't like his personality too much. I'll hold judgment on any werewolf character until I meet them. They do need to work the tropes a bit differently for genre. A vampire in a fantasy story functions differently to one in a horror story.
But I do wish they'd have dhampir and shifter as options as well as beast barbarian and undead warlock ... if you're going to have pre-made vampires and werewolves it would be nice to let players create their own in order to dovetail with the built in story a bit better.
