I've been hanging around steam and Reddit for the last couple of days, and the one criticism I just can't agree with so far is regarding the companions.
The main things people say about them is that they are too evil. And this claim is super strange to me. There are a total of five party members so far. Let's go over them.
Layzel - Okey layzel is super evil, bitchy and angry. First of all I don't think it's so wrong to have one of those. Aside from that, I don't know what did you expect. I know almost nothing about the forgotten realms and the bit of knowledge I do have comes from bg1 and 2. And based on the githenki in bg2 Layzel is just right, scheming, evil, and follows a rigid code of honour to the letter. So she is not a good character, but she is not badly written.
Shadowheart - the reception for shadowheart is really confusing for me. Now based on her deity I assume she is an evil character, but in the game itself she doesn't really strikes me as particularly evil. She is selfish and secretive, but that's about it. In the part of the game we have she mostly cares about the tadpole, which is fair. Most of all she reminds me of Morrigan from Dragon Age Origins, but she is more subtle, less flirty and less over the top. Most of all, I see a lot of potential for growth with her.
Astorian - aside from the very flashy (and super buggy) introduction, Astorian strikes me as kind of a cool gay guy. The only evil thing he did in my playthrough was to try to feed on me, and afterwards he claimed that he usually only feeds on animals which is Eduard level good. He seems to me like chaotic neutral at the most.
Gail & Wyll - these two are good, not much room for speculation. I'll just say that all the companions are not "Jesus good" or "Lucifer bad", and all of them are more complexed than that, which is a good thing.
So to summarize - we have one evil party member, 2 who are possibly bad but the jury is out right now, and two good party members. and all of the characters are fun and interesting, even though we haven't seen much of them yet.
Honestly while I don't like most of their characters (as in if I met them in real life I would not associate with them) there are very few things that annoy me about the writing of the characters.
The main thing that bothers me is that for some reason you can't tell Gale to stuff it when he goes "oh yeah, I trust you, now I need you to trust me and not ask any questions and promise to help... HOW DARE YOU not trust me when I have revealed absolutely nothing about myself thus far?"
That guy is either the most arrogant manipulative turd you've ever laid eyes on (thinking you don't have the basic intellect to question what he wants) or that entire section should be rewritten. Yeah, you eat magic items, big deal, you don't need me to pinky promise to help you, ask for it...
Edit for clarity, first post was a mess
