Ok, so to start off with let me state that I have not played the EE version aside from tooling around Candlekeep for a few minutes to see what kind of UI changes there where. So I don't yet have any opinion on the writing/characters added by Beamdog, and I'd rather this topic not get into how good/bad said writing may be. (That's a futile hope I imagine.)

When I look around for anything about the EE I see people complaining about the bad writing in the added content and for the new characters... which makes me wonder...
Has anyone made a mod that removes said added characters and such from the EE, basically allowing you to use the new engine with only the old writing?

There is indeed a mod that can remove those added characters.

Download link:
https://github.com/Argent77/A7-NoEENPCs/releases/latest

Mod Description:
https://github.com/Argent77/A7-NoEENPCs/blob/master/README.md

However, bear in mind that, even using that mod, there will still be a lot of differences between the original games and the enhanced editions.

From what I recall hearing about the other changes I'm not overly worried about those.

Not terribly worried about the NPCs, just I was perusing the sale, saw dragonspear, read some of the on site reviews, and it got me to thinking about the possible existence of this mod.

Thanks for the link, bookmarked it for consideration when I decide to play through BG next.