Larian has always stated that the way they approach games is that even if a particular choice or route is something only a very small minority will choose to explore and thereby experience, they believe it is worthwhile to develop that option.
I don't think that vision was fully realized in BG3, a lot of the evil routes and consequences were clearly less developed than the default path and some characters saw a lot more development than others. But I still believe that is their ambition and that they will have a variety of races and companions because they find them fun to develop and explore, even if very few people choose them.
