I do not fully agree with this critique, but there is one theme in this thread that I definitely agree with. It is that the game starts off far too fantastical... from the opening cinematic to the opening ship sequence. Once you hit the beach I tend to think that is more of what an RPG should start like. I tend to think it would have been a better approach to have been someone wandering about or in the local town where this mind flayer ship crashed who goes to investigate it and battles the infected people (or I guess chooses to join them if there was a realistic evil path to get to that point via the promise of power and such). It would have been fun to figure out the mystery of the ship and what is going on with these people as opposed to starting on the ship and being one of the infected. But I am kind of a sucker for the 'regular person' becomes a hero type of story.
The above was one of my main critiques of Pathfinder: WOTR as well. Within no time you are flung into this huge, epic situation and it felt very forced from a story perspective.
The other thing that I tend to agree with a bit is that the companions are too 'epic'. I think this is one of the issues with having all companions be origin characters. I think origin characters are a good idea and interesting, but not every companion has to have some crazy story around them. Some of them can be more regular people... or develop alongside your character. For example I think the Tiefling from the Druid Camp who talks about meeting you for a drink in Baldur's Gate would be a great companion option. She can be strong, powerful and have things to say... but she doesn't have to be some legendary vampire, a superwizard or an otherworldly being. You could just learn about her history, what she was doing at the camp, why she would want to come with you, etc.
But I will say I have been playing CRPGs for many years, all of the way back to BG and BG2. This game definitely feels like those games to me, just the evolution of those games rather than a copy and paste of them. Obviously things won't be the exact same since a different developer is working on them... but I very much enjoy the world and after the beginning of the game nothing has felt over the top or out of place.
