I like Orcs as hunter gatherers and steppe nomads.
Narratively, they use extremely withered tech - beyond their modern but stylized steel weapons (especially spiked metal clubs), they prefer stone-aged tech. Metal armour is a sign of weakness that you can't take the hits.
They aren't necessarily based on Eurasian steppe peoples or First Nations people, nor on Sahel or Fertile Crescent nomads, or any other groups surviving today, instead drawing on concepts like what we think Neanderthals were like, and on mythological creatures like Oni and Ogres (and yes, various fantasy Orcs).
But they're not bad. They're another group of people living their lives. They might go to war with humans or dwarves over territory, but they're not seeking it out just because. They mostly want to tend to their herds of swine and cattle, grow their barley (for beer of course), and expand their clans.
There's a relatively recent fantasy concept in some Japanese media that Orcs reproduce true (anything + Orc = Orc, no Half-Orcs allowed), and that Orcs are really into big families and expanding their clans. One could extrapolate some really vile ideas about Orcs from this in their relations to other peoples, but you can also lean into it the other way: Orcs love family. They love big families, and everyone is related somehow, everyone is equal. There's no runt of the litter because they're half-Human because it doesn't matter if the parent wasn't an Orc, their kids are Orcs too. So immigrants from other communities like Dwarves or Goblins or Humans or even Elves may live somewhat freely amongst the Orcs as equals, as long as they follow the Orc customs.
The Elder Scrolls has mostly positive Orc depictions, though they're discriminated against by other peoples because the early games in the series had them as monsters and only later did they become a playable lineage. These Orcs come in various factions - there are urban Orcs that are integrated into the cosmopolitan cities of the Human Empire; there are Wood Orcs that are almost more like Wood Elves but more violent; there are Orcs of the city of Orsinium within Wrothgar, a place forged for Orcs to throw off the shackles of the rest of the world and call it a kingdom of their own (and the King of Orsinium desperately wants to rehabilitate his people's image with a new religion and respectful relations with nearby kingdoms). There are Orcs of the Clansteads in the various mountain ranges that follow special Orcish customs and don't allow outsiders normally to enter. And yes, there are evil Orcs raising armies to destroy civilized peoples, too.
I think you don't rehabilitate Orcs by just suddenly whitewashing them and pretending everything is hunky dory. Instead, you complexify. Have good Orc communities and bad ones. And be sure to have good Human communities and bad ones. And if the human characters see Orcs as evil in the beginning, give them a chance to see how these good Orcs are better, kinder people than those bad people next door to them. Flip the expectations on their heads.