A lot of these stem from the fact that, right now, the Player Character is set up to be the spring board for the Orign Characters to show off: the player character is painted as an irrecoverable dullard when an Origan cahracter needs to demonstrate that they are smart, to be clumsy when an origin needs to show off that they're quick, and to generally be the fall-person agiasnt which the origin characters lord their personal traits over. Nearly every interraction withthe Origin characters is set up this way, with virtually no opportunities for the player chracter to correct them, stop them, or otherwise stand up for themselves in any way.
It happens a lot with important NPCs as well - our player character exists in order to be the ignorant stupid lump that others can extol their superiority at in whatever flavour they are doing so for a aprticular interraction. It's not as universal with other NPCs as it is with Origins, and there are several places with NPCs where we can take the upper hand or get the better of the interraction, but not many.
Gale's introduction is by far the worst interraction with him, and I feel it has coloured a lot of people's overall impressiosn of him, as first impressions do.
I do agree that Astarion's introduction is very sloppy regardless.
This. So much this.
We have very little agency as a custom character when dealing with npcs and origin chars. And very little *personality” overall. It’s just so weird to not have more options…especially when we are, for the most part, unvoiced.
