I don't want a special background, I want a special present. I want Tav to through the story get something unique that no origin gets. I agree that Tav being a blank slate is good, but it feels like Larian didn't put in the effort to make Tav a good blank slate. We hardly ever get to express our internal lives, hardly ever get the option to express even vague backstory beyond the set backstory tags we're given at the start. Hell, if you play a character with the Baldurian tag then at several points people will randomly say they can tell you're Baldurian, not to mention multiple places where you're unable to express pretty obvious thoughts and feelings a character might have in the situstion. To me that is the game pushing us to do certain things and be a certain way through mechanics if not narrative. So as a blank slate Tav isn't even a good example of one. It's average at best and bad at worst. And that's why to me this game cannot rise above "pretty good, impressive in some spots" but it's not some special, transcendent example of the genre. If I truly felt like i could make a truly unique, deep character like I have in other games, I'd be singing this game's praises.
I hold up PoE as the best blank slate I experienced because it went to effort to actually let me establish and expres my backstory at least once. and all of that still doesn't mean that our character's specialness has to come from backstory. Just being able to do and see unique things is what I want. In my opinion, playing as Tav should be the only way to get the full, clear context of everything that happens in the game, for one thing.
