(1) A Player Character – I think a PC would add to the RPG feel of the game.
He would die very often. And you would just Load Game, very often. It doesn’t work in this type of game unless you make him Godlike and/or unkillable which would ruin the game.
Unless of course he is added as a Follower (which are being added in a later patch) and can gain exp and has a unique Company Leader skill tree which confers various company-wide bonuses such as reduced food/tool usage, increased map movement speed and vision range, etc.