However, I think there is enough choice for how you can approach the game, unless you are extremely fussy.
If you don't like Origin characters, there are 12 hirelings of various races ( 8 of 12 are indeterminate at the moment ) all of which can be made into whatever you want, and none of which ( probably ) will sass you.
If you need more flexibility with no-name characters, you can probably create a 4-person faux-muiltiplayer party of whatever takes your fancy, and continue playing them all as single player.
If you like deep story-connected companion characters, you have 9 to choose from ( I assume Minthara/Halsin exclude each other, and the "Urge" will not be a companion ).
If you like playing your own fill-in-the-blanks character, as I usually do, you can be whatever you want.
If you want to re-live the BG1/2 Baalspawn power/temptation story, the Dark Urge has you covered, and I'm sure I will try that as well.
And if you want a more fully defined and detailed protagonist, you have 6 to choose from; maybe I'll eventually try one of them, maybe not.
I agree that even more choice of would be a good thing, but I would rather the game is released now than wait another year while extra characters are written/created, recorded and integrated into the story.
In particular, I would contrast the 9 BG3 companions with BG1, which had 25. But, the deepest level of interaction in BG1, which had no romances, was probably Coran; and that wasn't exactly deep and meaningful, he just had 2 simple quests for you rather than one. The 5 companions not available before reaching the city were so late in the game that they were probably only ever used if you had lost party members, which is much less common in more recent games unless scripted. ( BTW, did anyone actually find any redeeming feature to Tiax? Second only to Noober in annoyance value in my memory of the game ).
Companions in BG2 were a little more satisfying, as the majority of side-quests were organised around them, there were a few romances, and they did have a few alignment-based interactions, including fights to the death. But there were only 14 of them ( excluding the more cameo characters, Imoen, Sarevok and Yoshimo ), not significantly more choice than with BG3, and likely (we don't know yet) with less depth.
There are reasonable concerns about balance between races, classes, and alignments of the main companions on offer, but I don't really know how those could be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. - Demographically, Faerun is supposed to be 80%+ Human, so BG3 already seems much more diverse than that. I guess, hireling, protagonist and faux-multiplayer will be the only routes to party race diversity unless there are later companion additions. - The game supports over 40 class variants, so you obviously need to pick and choose, even with a party-of-6 mod. But, it sounds like you can multi-class and re-spec companions and hirelings as needed, even if this destroys the story-logic of companions. - Alignment has never really been treated properly in BG games, since Law/Chaos was mostly ignored; now in 5e it doesn't really exist! So, if it's not really part of the underlying mechanism, you get to make your mind up how to deal with companions. I can cope with that, if the story does a good job with morality and choice generally; we have yet to find out.
Either way, I'm looking forward to playing the game for what it is, rather than what it isn't.
