I doubt I can give any contribute at all after 12 pages of posts, but hey, here I am. I understand the basic reasoning behind this system, it was built thinking of a party of four friends playing the game together, with each one individually controlling ONE character. This system allow the maximum degree of freedom if you control just ONE character but becomes sub-par as soon as even one player is forced to use more that ONE at a time. Since I suspect the game is going to be played by a full party of four people just a fraction of the times, this means the current system will results flawed most of the them.
It was always awful, both in DOS and DOS2, but at least you didn't have to jump frequently. Now you have to, and it would not be a problem if not for this system.
If I want to jump over a broken section of a bridge I must, in sequence: 1) Taking out of the chain every character, otherwise those linked together will occupy all the avaiable landing space on the other side trying to reach me; 2) Find a valid spot to jump, even more time consuming for low-STR characters; 3) Make the jump; 4) Move away in order to make room for another one to jump; 5) Repeat the above for each character; 6) Link them back together.
It's just tedious, not to mention all the problems related to the stealth mechanic.
I understand Larian wants to innovate the genre, and they did in many aspects, but this doesn't mean to get rid of well established mechanics just for the sake of it. Even because everyone complained about this since DOS, so it shouldn't be news for them!
