No it doesn’t ^^ Unreal has it’s own ways and flows. The GameMode class used in each level features a set of base classes that will be used to represent the player: a PlayerController, a Pawn and a HUD for example. Those settings can be checked within the GameMode blueprint that is set for the level or the WorldSettings of the level where you can override them manually for each level.
It could be that the controller and pawn in that sample (I’ll download it later) are not using the correct classes.
Back to spawning, the GameMode class will try to choose the best PlayerStart to spawn your player. This is done using the following functions: FindPlayerStart and ChoosePlayerStart. What it does by default (you can override it in C++ if you like) is to choose the best PlayerStart where the player can fit in, if not you will get a warning like: Warning - PATHS NOT DEFINED or NO PLAYERSTART with positive rating