I think there are a couple factors about durge v tav that are worth keeping in mind when talking about which people should play. Firstly, it sounds like for all you can make them look how you want, Durge had their own backstory and you can't actually create your own character, which is a big thing for people playing this type of game. Secondly, it's not just a matter of durge struggling to be good, there is a level of darkness and grimness that not everyone will want to deal with with their own character. Its one thing to have a complicated past, it's another to constantly be assaulted by your character having some truly horrifying thoughts and actions that are sometimes out of your control. The level of darkness in this game is overall fine for me, but some of the stuff I've heard about the durge feels like it goes across a line that for me personally means I'll never actually play it despite having considered it before when I first learned about it.
It can be argued how “custom” is a custom character in an RPG if they do have a backstory. In my opinion that doesn’t stop it from being a custom character as long as the game allows you some room of movement when it comes to their personality and choices and the choices have consequences within a game, therefore creating a very different playthrough for the different type of characters. Do you want to play a good guy? An evil? An oathbreaking paladin, a naive and sheltered mage, a generally silly rouge making a joke out of everything to make others underestimate them? Your choice.
A good example to this are the old BG games, where regardless of your race your backstory was that you were an orphan from Candlekeep whose fosterfather got murdered in front of you. The plot itself was all about your predisposed backstory and it’s consequences. However, within the game you could play as literally anything, good, bad, silly, whatever you liked to roleplay. Other examples could be the Dragon Age games, or frankly, any RPG created by Bioware in it golden age, altough they were never strong on the whole “consequence” field where as Larian really did a fantastic job with that in BG3.
In my opinion a set background can help with creating a more dramatic and fun gameplay and a more involved plot if it is done well. If it is done badly, it makes the player feel that they are playing through an interactive book where none of what they do matter.
In the light of this we could say that even playing with any of the Origin characters should be much the same as playing with Custom Tav. We do, after all have all the choices with them as well, right? No. The Origin characters also come with a personality that you get to experience first hand if you play as Custom Tav or even just another Origin. They come with a pretty clear path, that Tav can stirr depending on their relationship with them. Like, how Astarion is selfish with a sadistic streak, and if you don’t have a good Tav discouraging him, he would always choose the bad options given chance. Playing them therefore is not roleplay in the sense that you don’t only have a background story but you cannot build up their personality and choices freely (even if technically the game allows you to) during gameplay. You are playing
their story, not
yours and therefore you have the interactive book playthrough with them.
This is, I think, why in their statistics Larian included Durge into the Mustom Character percentage, but not the Origin ones. Thes are pretty strongly set up, while Dirge, despite their fixed backstory, can be played in most any ways, as they suffer from amnesia and their past personality is lost, freeing up the player to create a new one for them.
Being able to customize the looks of a character is a small part of the Custom character feel in my opinion, but I know it is important for a lot of people. It makes the character more “yours” in a sense and, well you will be staring at them for about a 100+ hrs of gameplay, so it is really important that you should like them…
