...keep the origins as they are, just remain as recruitable companions rather than characters you can start as...
Oh my goodness, I hope not.
I *really* want to play as the origin characters, starting as them and letting each of them be the *main* character on various play-throughs.
To me, that's WAY more interesting than trying to push a custom character into the main role. I'd rather play a character with an actual backstory that the game acknowledges, instead of a backstory that's kind of just in my head. There's so much more a story can do when the story knows the character and lets you make moral decisions and such. For instance, how would the world react if Astarion was a good guy who wanted to save the tieflings versus Astarion being a bad guy and wanting to join the goblins.
With multiple origin characters to choose from, I get multiple backgrounds to play in a game that actually acknowledges the unique background.
Instead of me playing my blah drow who once upon time did blah thing, or so I vaguely sometimes imagine in my head.
That seems to be the current intended route to go, which I'm personally fine with too. My suggested take is mostly based on a fringe community I follow (I like to hear either side of a debate) that are mostly anti-BG3, very critical to nearly everything about it. One of the discussions that has been had on length there, is based on DOS2 and comparing with BG3, in how to make a generic character feel as important and meaningful as any of the Origins. In DOS2, you not only missed out on story if you played as a custom character, but missed out on the experience those quests/kills during the quests gave as well. So there was a lot of FOMO (Fear of missing out) for a lot of players that prefer to play as custom characters.
So you could do a solution like MrFuji suggested, to add specific new quests to the custom character as well, but in the end of the day that would just turn custom characters into a nameless Origin character with a fixed background / in-world interest, whereas those who typically prefer to play as a custom character, often explicitly want that blank slate to roleplay an imagined character of their own, without pre-disposed backstory and personality that they may not relate to on a personal level. So that way, you'd only have a game full of Origin characters, but no option to adhere to their preference.
You can also leave it as-is now, which will leave a portion of the playerbase feel like they're giving up on a lot of experiences of quests they're missing out on, and/or experience and loot gained through said quests, just because they prefer to play a custom.
The third, is to narrow down a MSQ for the protagonist, the player characters, that each origin/companion compliments with their own perspectives on it, and their own individual side-quests, that does not steal from the MSQ which is the custom character's "origin quest" if you will, the main story of the game.
I'm not picky so I'd be happy with any three of them (I will play as Shadowheard as main whether I have to mod or not, and currently do in EA in private mods too), but from what I see overall across socials leads me to think the third alternative would be a middle-ground most people would be happy with. Maybe some creative merger where if you choose to start as eg. Shadowheart, the custom character MSQ is assigned to Shadowheart, so that you may have the best of both worlds somehow. Not sure. I'm just brain-storming at this point.
I wouldn't be opposed to your idea (Tav = The Protagonist). Most crpgs do this. But I think it's very unlikely that Larian will scrap their Origin Companions idea and prevent you from playing as them and/or make it so they don't also have tadpoles.
That's kind of part of my point, it wouldn't need scrapping at all. Their quests are already implemented as companions. If anything, it'd mean less work for Larian. Because right now, while it's kind of invisible to players, you actually have to make the characters twice with current system. One with their behavior, quest progression/journal entries, and dialogue as a companion - The other for the same as an Origin (AVATAR). This solution means only one iteration for companions. Or if merged as in last paragraph above, equal amount of work, but not any more.
Even as companions, they could still have tadpoles and be just as they are now. A while back there was a thread about how it feels like the party is missing a leader, and questioning why the companions would even want to follow Tav, or how they have every reason not to but for some reason seem to follow them anyway. An MSQ could help underline Tav (or assigned starter character choice of custom/Origin in CC by the player) as the group leader and mitigate some of that party synergy dissonance people mentioned in that thread as well, potentially.
