The purpose is the game being about skillfully slaying monsters. You're not supposed to create a character representing "yourself", you're supposed to hit stuff, hard. The story is barely something you can call a story. You're going to put a kettle on your head and hit stuff with an anchor. They simply didn't care about representation or even character customization very much, just about the gameplay and visual diversity of the world around you.
We're talking about Elden Ring, not Sekiro here. If Michael Zaki didn't want you to be able to represent yourself, or what you value in the game, he would've just given you John Eldenring to play as, and told you to go fuck yourself if you didn't like it.