@Colophonscrawl i think that "you cant play as a templar" is the funniest complaint qud antifans have about it because you can. you actually can. true kin start neutral to favorable with the templar. theres nothing stopping you from wearing fullerite plate and carrying a rhombus shield (its fine midgame AV armor!) you can even gentling cone proselytes. like theres literally - there is nothing actually stopping you. except the game doesnt spoonfeed it to you. and its a bit silly.
@Colophonscrawl its also crystal clear that like the only "faction stories" that exist posit you as exterior to them and qud in general - like you can't play as a barathrumite either, in the same way in FNV you can't play as a legion guy, or an NCR guy, because youre busy being someone whos not really either of those guys. "why cant i play as a creeper in minecraft". "why cant i play as a girsh cultist". "why can't i play as the green goblin in spiderman for the ps2". etc
@rubiline the devs explicitly are like "no I'm not coding in a section where you express a bunch of 80s cartoon villain/40k novella character levels of fascist bullshit for absolutely nothing" and I respect it in the same way that I respect that Toady didn't put playable slavery mechanics in DF, which, other people have tried modding in for what I can only assume are gamer-exclusive reasons I am not privy to