It's just a gimmick, that they are hoping will stick. It's a pretty novel idea, because usually you have a fixed protagonist like "The Witcher Geralt" or a semi fixed protagonist with some customisation like "Commander Shepard" or a Blank slate with a title like "The Bhaalspawn".
But just because it's a somewhat original idea doesn't make it a good one.
They should have left the origin companions in Dos and just made some pregens for the people that can't be arsed with character creation.
That would have freed up a lot of resources into making several more companions, that way it would be a lot easier finding a party compostition with characters you can tolerate.
Just because a character isnt a Hero of the frontier, the lover of a god or a Daywalking Vampire doesn't mean that they have to be a peasant or bartender, they can be low level adventurers, town guards or knights, Skillful Rogues, Apprentice mages. Etc... To reflect the fact that we actually are only level 1, instead of making it convoluted with, "uhm i was like the best at everything, but then i forgot all my skills because of a brain worm".
