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The underwhelming and uneven distribution of rewards is something that comes up a lot in critiques of how Larian has handled evil playthroughs. I don't think this is even disputable at this point after the Grymforge patch-the disparity holds true across the board.
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Excellent post, and mirrors a lot of my thoughts exactly, especially with regards to the lack of consequences for the good characters. In comparison to how much you lose by siding with the goblins, the evil companions are very tolerant of our good deeds.
Having finished my latest playthrough of Patch 6 on the so-called "evil path", I felt compelled to share my issues with the direction of narrative and quest design in BG3, and it's gratifying to see other people echoing similar sentiments.
So to add onto what has already been said regarding item, companion, and narrative rewards and punishments, the variety of quests currently available is quite bad for an evil (or even a non-evil non-heroic) playthrough as well.
Quest-wise, there just isn't enough to do if you're playing something as simple as a cookie-cutter self-interested NE character. Why should he care about what happens to Mayrina, or risk himself entering a burning building, or waste his money buying some artist’s freedom? He shouldn’t and he doesn’t. The logical course of action, then, is to skip those quests altogether. That’s fine by me, I don’t mind locking myself out of content based on my character, it’s a part of roleplaying after all. The problem is, there is no balance. If I skip everything that an overall evil character would have no interest in, I’m skipping most of what is currently in the game. In contrast, there are almost no such considerations for overall good characters. The only things that would give a good character pause are helping the Zhents and Glut. Those are the only significant quests a good character may want to skip to keep to their alignment. Even then, you can do most of the Zhent questline without knowing about the hideout, and if you turn down Glut you can continue Spaw's quest uninterrupted. For evil characters however, entire questlines and all rewards are skipped because there is little reason to engage in the first place. How is that fair?
It’s true that this can be less of a problem if you use your imagination. It’s possible to justify some things to yourself, I certainly do. We’re not here to save Mayrina, we’re just raiding the hag’s basement for magical artifacts to feed to Gale – even though the game still treats us as if we’re here for Mayrina, never mind that we killed her brothers and never expressed any interest in her situation to Ethel. My Baldurian character is buying the artist because he happens to know who Oskar and his patroness are, and thinks this may be a useful connection to make – even though he shows no sign of recognition until Oskar actually names himself, and furthermore it makes no sense to let him travel alone on the roads infested with goblins and gnolls if my character plans to use him for favors. Still, some things are harder to justify – Waukeen’s Rest stands perpetually burning because I can’t find the reason to even talk to the Flaming Fist storming the front door, lest they try to rope the party into helping. And why should I have to do any of this in the first place? Why should I have to twist my reasoning into pretzels and ignore how the game reacts to me just to properly roleplay my character without skipping most of what’s available, when good characters get the majority of the game's content, most of which feels natural to pursue without resorting to mental gymnastics?
Ideally, in an RPG that gives you alignment options, being overall good and overall evil should balance out. Otherwise, there is no reason to play one over the other, as one will always be a strictly better experience. Some quests make sense to pursue only to good, some only to evil; same for earning allies, rewards, suffering positive and negative short-term and long-term consequences. On practice, that is rarely the case. In any RPG, when was the last time picking the “evil” option to resolve a quest ended up giving the player the best outcome? How about picking the “good” option resulting in the worst outcome, or cutting a questline short, as is often the case with evil options? This almost never happens. Most of the time, the evil path is both mechanically and narratively inferior. From the looks of it, BG3 is not going to be any different, and that's very disappointing.
Larian, of all things, this is not what you should have taken from BG1 and 2.
As for the OP, I think there may be some bugs at play. While the Underdark is generally quieter due to lack of content (made worse by the diminished party on an evil playthrough), your companions shouldn't be complete voiceless dummies regardless of which side you picked. At the very least, this hasn't been my experience.
