I only played through the prologue up to now, which expectedly was rather linear. But by sheer luck I seem to have made a reasonable choice for a character, a sniper operative. The problem I tend to have with Owlcat Games is that sometimes I choose a character and then I meet the premade companions, and discover that given the other people in my party I'd rather have played something else. For example, if I had chosen a warrior / tank build, I would have ended up with the same build as my first companion, and that would have been rather annoying. In the prologue you get a tank warrior, a psykker operative, and a soldier. So if you want something different, you need to take either an officer, or one of the other three classes with a very different build than the companions. As the psykker is somewhat special, I don't mind that my main is another operative; as a sniper he plays very different, and the special abilities of two operatives work well together.