The problem is that the MC is way too bland and replaceable.
It's an artistic choice, not a good one in my opinion but an artistic choice nonetheless. They want to put the focus on the party, not on a single character, because this is really a game thought to be cooperative, with single-player mode as a bonus.
Its kind of strange, but I think there is this idea floating around in the aether for some time now, that Dungeons and Dragons really can't be a worthwhile solitary or single-player experience, just because of how things necessarily work in PnP. The Wizards have really run away from the idea of a single-player in D&D. All their marketing and pop culture promotion would seem to suggest that D&D is a game meant only for groups, and any new computer or video game that comes out in this franchise has to pay lip service to that central idea now.
But I think in the old days, whoever was running TSR understood that D&D also had a pretty strong appeal to lone individuals who might not actually have a gaming group, and so those old crpgs all tried to simulate the party based experience, but with an almost exclusively single player focus. So they gave us companions to help bridge the gap, and give the lone player an experience that was like the best of what might happen in group play. It represented a sort of idealized version of group play, but which still knew that it was really presenting something meant to be enjoyed by a single player alone.
I call that design emphasis "God Mode" (single player, but controlling multiple characters) which was sort of a hybrid between what it felt like to be a lone Player Character, but in a way also what it felt like to be a DM, like viewing things from the outside perspective or the party as a whole. They took that dual perspective and married it to the idea of a fantasy novel script or a choose your own adventure YA book, but where the protagonist was left blank slated so the lone player could fill that part in.
This design style created a separate D&D lineage, one that was pretty distinct from standard PnP D&D group modules or campaigns, at least in my view. It's a lineage that began with the old Gold Box PC games and hit its apex and most fully realized form in BG1/2, when the internet was still in its infancy.
Now, because its possible to actually create multiplayer D&D games that work to emulate the PnP experience more exactly, that other style of game has sort of gone by the wayside. Like a relic of the past or something, which is sort of a shame, because it actually hooks a different kind of player, or a different kind of kid I think, and also gives them a way into this thing, that they might not otherwise get.
Most of the source books and materials I purchased as a newb, mainly for the artwork or the figurines or the stories, were never actually used in PnP sessions. Cause I just didn't have a bunch of nerdy friends who obsessed over fantasy stuff the way I did. I had plenty of friends to be sure, they just weren't into D&D like I was. It wasn't like in the movies or Strangers Things, with 5 kids in a basement all amped up to play in each others imagination. Maybe it was like that in the early 80s, when I was still to young to understand the rules lol. Instead it was like me trying to convince one other person to "check this out", but that never quite worked, because you can't really play PnP D&D with just 2 people either haha. For me D&D was always a more solitary thing, and I much preferred the computer games over like drama class antics around a table or trading magic cards. Did I miss out on something special there? Probably. But you know, not everyone has siblings or can pal around with a gang of 4 at the constant ready, and so things like Baldur's Gate crpgs stepped in to fill that role for people in those kinds of situations.
I can understand exactly why the Wizards would look at a successful co-op game developer and say, "Yep, that's exactly what we want! Give them the golden goose!!!" but I just think its kind of a poor fit for Baldur's Gate. BG was like perfecting the single player Gold Box form, a long form game with a lot of reading and down time and solitary style emersion, not like a casual arcade or console game, grab and go with 4 controllers. They should have picked a different campaign module, with a less storied past, if that's what they wanted to make.
