Finding out who it is I'm playing in Baldur's Gate 3 really was an additional side quest! It's quite possible that your Tav got picked up at some other location than Yartar, as the fleeing Nautiloid was skipping through spheres and planes, but even the Githyanki narrative wasn't fully developed, at least during my first playthrough. Some of Lae'zel's comments and responses suggested that Gith Tav had to be educated about Tir'su and Githyanki society, but was supposed to know things about this Fayroon. I glossed this over in head canon with Lae'zel from glourious Crèche K'liir taking my Tav, Sava, for some kind of farm egg with shady background. It seems that the further you stray from the mainstream tale of the Hero (from and) of Baldur's Gate, the fewer your dialogue options get. But I understand that WotC wasn't exactly easy to work with, so maybe a lot got scrapped in early stages.
If our civilisation survives long enough, maybe we'll get to see some sort of UN protection for "intellectual property", that prevents new franchise owners from turning much loved fictional worlds into unredeemable trash. From "the New Adventures of He-Man" to the flood of reboots, remakes and reimaginations we're seeing today, a lot of it felt like hearing noises in the basement and catching a burglar playing with your old toys and getting all the names wrong. Positive examples are quite rare.
I probably wouldn't have picked up BG3 if some folks from my old AD&D group hadn't asked me to join. When I saw what Wizards of the Coast were doing with "my" game back in the noughties, I made the decision to stick with 2e AD&D, advancing the timeline and further develop our FR-campaign world myself. It's a lot of additional work to not only create encounters, adventures and campaigns, but also entertain catalogues of NPCs and detail events that have nothing to do with the players directly, but I never looked back. Thus, BG3 was a window into what has happened in the official D&D multiverse during those 20+ years. Since I had no meta-knowledge, this uncertain-if-I'll-like-it approach led to some funny observations that didn't age well. A nautiloid attack on a Faerûnian city? That's daring! Cult of the Absolute? Probably some 4e crap best to be ignored. Is anybody else seeing anthropomorphic lizards? But generally, I had the impression that 5e is a return to strength for D&D. The Githyanki in BG3 were spot on, 5e creatures pretty much matched their descriptions in my dusty old tomes and there were some dice mechanics, like e.g. advantage/disadvantage or ability-based saves, that weren't new, but used in a clever way. With the announcements of One D&D, I had hoped WotC finally understood the value of continuity and consistency. But reading about purple dragon riders makes me wonder what I was thinking.
