You know, Robert... I don't think I've ever seen you jump into a thread without doing so seemingly for the sole purpose of being contrary and fractious. What do you get out of it? It's fine if you don't see the problem as being one - but a lot of people do. We're not stupid, we just care about immersion in space, especially in story-driven games.

Your sole comment here boils down to "It's the mechanics, don't question it!" ... which is a valid opinion to have, and which you could have said in a couple of sentences and saved everyone some effort.

We are all aware that the player character is the main character and the driving decision-making force in purely mechanical terms; we are the single player playing the single player game, of course we are. That's the mechanics. That's not the story; that's not the setting; that's not an in-space, in-world reason. It's the out-of-character reason - there is no in-character reason presented, and that's a problem. Having such a reason is important, and good games provide one. BG3 does not... and as I discussed "It hasn't yet!" is not an adequate response; it is past the point where it needs to have done so.

Immersion and consistency in world space matter - and if they don't matter to you, or you've just gotten used to playing games that treat them like they don't matter (in which case, BG3 will be excellent for you, I'm sure...), that's fine - but there are higher calibre games out there that don't do that, and do treat the in-universe story as meaningful and relevant, and any good story-driven rpg should do as much. Most of the ones I've played do.

No, the tadpole is not such a reason; I discussed why it fails to be so above, which you suggested you would address, but didn't. It doesn't serve to justify why everyone with their very important histories and very important personal goals have decided to make those goals second fiddle to the choices that our player character makes, and to designate them, specifically, as the defacto leader of the group. It's a shared danger that serves to keep the party together and justify them travelling and working together as a group, but it doesn't justify making our player character the leader and decison-maker.

Yes, the reason that we are the defacto leader of the group and the others are following our decision-making should be established right away, from the time that others start doing so. That doesn't mean starting at the end and spilling all the beans on everything right away - it means giving a sensible, in-universe reason for an obvious and mundane question (Why are you the one we're all following the lead of?), the lack of which is jarring and immersion-breaking.

I do complain about the mary-sues, though mostly because of the writing, and the way in which our character often exists purely for them to dunk on and to feed them the fall-guy lines that they can respond to, to upsell their own awesomeness... but the complaint here is mainly around such important, established and epic people following our player character and bowing down to their decisions, when none of them have a reason or disposition to do so. That's a problem. The reason to follow our character should put the character at least on reasonably equal footing with the importance of the other characters and their other objectives, and enough above or more urgent enough to make the choice from them of putting those personal objectives on hold and to put their opinions on what we should do secondary to what this other person says we all will do, seem like a reasonably believable and sensible decision. Right now, BG3 does not provide this, and it really should.