I like the option to have a clean slate with Tav, basically one of the only truly sane people in the group, and the Durge, which is a really nice nod to the old games.
With Tav, I can project my own roleplay ideas into ( I made for example two of my DnD characters in BG3).
About the coincidences around the companions: I was a bit surprised, how so many Baldurians ended up on the Nautiloid. I mean, Shadowheart was on a mission and not in BG, true, but Astarion for example - it sounds, like he and a Tav that is not one of the Underdark races or gith, are supposed to have been snatched off the street. Durge was a bit more discreet . But what the heck would some mindflayer cult want with a vampire spawn and a nobody?
Wyll and Karlach must have jumped on the ship and instantly be snatched and tadpoled, while Tav/Durge was running through the ship, freeing Us, stealing everything not nailed down ... One would think, the mindflayers would have other problems than tadpole a lady so hot, that she should burn the tadpole, and some random guy. I mean, if Wyll was that great fighter, I can see the cult maybe wanting him, but on the middle of a catastrophe?
And Gale- well I guess, he might be there a bit longer on the ship.
Lae'zel was according to her own words not with the gith attacking the ship, so did she get snatched in the astral plane? She knows nothing about Faerun, so she probably wasn't there before.
And Durge: we know, how they were tadpoled and who did that to them, so seeing a mindflayer in the first person perspective inserting the tadpole on that ship doesn't make sense. At that time Durge was already tadpoled, they were somewhere else entirely, so why would they end up on that ship?
And then it turn out, that they all have some ties to the main plot, but Astarion and Tav. So at least, there should be made clear, that they were snatched up for a purpose imo.
Astarion suffers the most with the plot change around Cazador, since he and his story can just be ignored without consequences. As I recall, Cazador was supposed to be tied to the main plot, which probably was scratched with the upper city map.
