One of the things I like so much about Origin characters is that they come prebuilt with flaws. I don't mean flaws in their stats, but rather in their personalities. They're more like real people in that sense. Whereas I find custom characters tend to be more stoic and empty, almost too cool for school, if you know what I mean.

Or they're overly crowd pleasing in nature. By that, I mean they tend to say whatever the NPC wants to hear, whatever needs to be said to get the best result, the +1 like or the conversation path that leads to pick pocketing the hot magic item or whatever.

But I think that's less likely to happen (at least in my case) if I'm playing Astarion. I can respect his character because it's fleshed out, and I'm not morphing it all about in my head as I go. And I know that if I'm missing anything by sticking to a firm personality, then I can later pick it up by playing Gale or Lae'zel or Wyll or Shadowheart.

This approach intrigues me, and I have to admit, I also like the idea of playing a character that the game knows how to talk to. A game where the other characters can say my name out loud, for instance. That seems like a small thing, but it means so much.

Consider how it feels when you're walking around and the companions start talking to each other. Playing a companion lets you be a part of that instead of being above it all.