I think they should have either gone with the origin characters system, or custom characters. having both is likely to end up not meeting the potential of either.

There's so many variables that Larian has introduced by letting players play as a wide variety of races (and more are to be expected down the road) and classes (again, more to come), and DOS2 already had a lot to contend with in a rpg where class didn't matter at all for dialogue or quests, and comparatively fewer races and origins characters.

There's just much more major writing, cutscene etc work to be done when it has to be written from the perspective of that character as a PC and as a party member-I'd suspect at least more than twice the work, and it comes at the very noticeable in-game cost of content for the custom PC. Shadowheart gives much less of a damn about your pc being a gith than she does Lae'zel etc.

On the other hand, if Larian had gone Origins-only, they wouldn't have had to worry about having to take into account stuff like the PC being a sorcerer or druid, or a drow or dwarf, since none of the origins are those, which could translate into more content for the origins we do have.

That being said, I prefer custom characters, particularly for a D&D/Forgotten Realms rpg. A big draw to me for the BG+NWN games was making the character 'my own' and customization was a big part of that. Credit where credit is due, Larian has done a lot of work to make sure that npcs recognize your choices in race/class etc-a commendable effort. And yet we see massive resources diverted towards this experiment with the Origins system in a game that encourages a huge degree of choice in character creation. Two goals that seem at odds with one another, and I can't help but feel like those resources would be better served chasing one singular model.