Note sure you really understand what roleplaying is, being able to modify your character's appearance in Bioware games opens up absolutely no roleplaying opportunities at all, sure you can create a character that looks ugly or has red hair but it does not matter what your character looks like in game as it does not change how other characters react to your character nor does it open up any new "roleplaying opportunities", dialogue options or alternate paths to follow, the game is always the same no matter how your character looks and every character in the game will still want to bang yours despite their massive underbite.
And just because you can change the character's first name (which is never actually referenced or changes anything in game) and appearance (which again has no effect on anything in the game) does not make the character yours. Bioware give them a background, past relationships, families and prior experiences that mean nothing to the player playing them which makes them Bioware's characters and not the player's. What is that you say? You hate that mother figure Bioware saddled the protagonist with without the player's input? Well you can go suck a doodle because Hawke loves their mother and will display maudlin emotion when she gets turned into frankenbride, because this is Bioware's character and not yours!
I am not trying to argue that Geralt is somehow not a set protagonist because you get a degree of control over his appearance and actions, as I said before while I do prefer games that allow me to create my own character I appreciate set-protagonists more when they drop the pretense and don't try to claim the character is somehow not a set-protagonist. But don't try to fool yourself into thinking that just because you can change a character's first name and appearance that this makes them any less of a set-character, Shepard has always been and will always be Bioware's character no matter how hard you try to delude yourself into thinking otherwise.
I don't think set protagonist and protagonist that is up to player (is there name for protagonist type games like ME, DA and Skyrim for example have?) are two opposites, but rather there is scale. Some games don't let almost anything be up to players like Last of Us, some have set protagonist, but allow roleplay like Witcher and some let you craft your own protagonist in varying level. There is good and bad sides in every option, but overall characters like Geralt will always have their look and their personality, that's not really up to you. Geralt will always be Geralt, when Shepard can be either John, Jane or even Dice (my Shepard) or close to anyone. Bioware has made setting of course, but that setting is somewhat loose so character will be yours.
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