Further, what you seem to be missing is that the entirety of the first two games plus expansions is actually a story dedicated around Charname, so obviously Charname isn't simply "along for the ride". Arguing that the story doesn't react enough to Charname's attributes and class choices isn't a totally unfair complaint but that is by design and also a meta-gaming complaint. The story is specifically written to be an adventure about Charname that lets Charname be whatever the player has decided. One can hardly make a reasonable complaint that Charname isn't in the foreground enough when the entire plot of two games is literally revolving around Charname.
BG1&2 lets you create any character you want, because charname doesn't matter. That is the point. I can create a neutral character who then proceeds to cut a bloody path through the Sword Coast, then ends up a hero (because that is the default ending). Upon import to BG2 my character gets treated as neutral (at this point the game enforces a canon party as a backstory, ignoring your previous choices), proceed on the same bloody warpath (you can be a hunted criminal that is celebrated a hero in Suldanesslar, because there is only this one ending), and only at the point of hell trials I finally get the game to pay attention to my character. Then in ToB again it doesn't matter, my charname can have godly wisdom by that point and still they are expected to act dumb enough to fall for Mel's plot. It is that linear until you finally arrive at the yes/no ending, at which point my only other option of changing the ending was going through with Anomen's romance.
To me this is not a story dedicated to protagonist, because most of it is already prewritten and whether the character I have created actually fits this story doesn't matter. Hence if you step out of the line, it leads to the absurd situations as above. And that is the best case scenario, worst case is when I have tried to be "too creative" in roleplaing my good cleric in BG2 and she was instakilled by a special "cheated npc" for it.
