For the purpose of receiving more efficient and valuable feedback, I really, really wish Larian communicated. And told us what is Placeholder, what is Bug, what is Working As Intended, what is Not Gonna Change, what is Being Worked On, what is Under Consideration, etc.
This 100 times.
I'm not sure it has that much to do with better story-telling. Rather, I think it's more a matter of "making the PC be as central to the story, important and cool, as the companions". And for this, my general opinion is that people who want their PC to be as special as the other companions can play an Origin Character. Alternatively, if they choose a Custom Character, they can select the/one of Larian's pre-determined Backstories. But even if Larian writes only one, I hope that Custom Character can choose their Backstory between : Pre-written One, and None (i.e. Blank).
I think the important of PC to the plot is a little different to the backgrounds. I had in mind what Dragon Age Origins had done with their Origin stories when I wrote about storytelling. The world sometimes reacted differently whether you played a human warrior Cousland, or a Dalish archer Mahariel, or a Dwarf noble Cadash, and different options opened depending on your background. But then the game made you a Grey Warden and you were central to the story at the leader of Grey wardens in Ferelden. Your backgrounds gave a good flair to the story but they did not overwrite your importance as a Grey Warden leader.
Coming back to BG3, we still don't know what makes Tav important. We knew in DOS2 that everyone was a Godwoken, but unfortunately the custom character was the weakest because everyone else had an additional backstory and personality, heck Lohse and Fane had their "special" secrets. I agree that so far all BG3 companions seem cooler, but personally I like playing as Tav because I found their writing for custom character more interesting in BG3 regardless of their background.
