Well, this PFH finally made it explicit for me that the core theme of this game is: evil is cool; good is boring. And that is the exact opposite of the original BG games. Dark Urge is the final awful piece of the game. What a disgusting psychopath monster! That Swen and co. would see Dark Urge as some cool, awesome, interesting, fun character to play says a lot.
It's a huge blow that there is no truly good party to play with, a first for a D&D-style party-based RPG.
For Act 1, Karlach, Gale, Halsin, and now it seems like Wyll (it seems you can now fork him to Good Folk Hero or Evil Machine of Devil Vengeance). For later you also have Jaheria and Minsc. 4 char party 6 potentially good companions. I didn't include Shadowheart because you still get some negative reaction modifiers from her for doing some good things like helping the refugees.
On the clearly Evil side you have Laezel, Minratha, Shadowheart (even if she is flippable to good her default reaction modifiers tend to an evil playthrough you have to thread the line otherwise). Wyll in this category is up for grabs, for now his default rection modifiers tend to support you doing good things but that may have been reworked given the information they told is in this PfH.
So yes there is a truly good party to play with. As for Karlach she came off as pretty sweet in the PfH, yes she lived in Avernus because she was enslaved but she was killing demons for the devils. Its not like her background was murdering people for devils. She seems a pretty stereotypically sweet good char personality like Halsin, and Minsc.
For me i am going to engage this as if i was eyes wide open my traditional good playthroughs. I will recruit them all, but once i in game learn Asatarion is a vampire spawn i will sideline him and give him to the monster hunter at that point in the story, and i wont put up with Laezel for long, i will try to show her the wrong of her ways but replace her for Karlch pretty soon after Karlach becomes recruitable. I will however persist and try to flip Shadowheart to Selune if that is possible in game. I wont be bored with that good playthrough and i will be amped when i can work together with Jaheria and Minsc and the Harpers.
You are conveniently lumping in neutral with the good side but not the evil side. Neutral is exactly that, and very much NOT good. Gale and Wyll are definitely not good, and the PFH confirmed that Jaheira is neutral. So, only Karlach, Halsin, and Minsc are truly good companions.
And on "redeeming" companions, I won't play along with Larian's silly cliche of "redeeming" a Sharran priestess and turning her good. I don't at all see that as the job of my good PC. In my game, the companions will stay who they were when I first met them, evil or good.
Philosophy, you can't be good and refuse to redeem someone you know is redeemable, that's an act of evil and arguably leaves you a share in the evil they do.
