based on larian's responses concerning evil/neutral companions already in game and the discussion about 12 or 8 npc companions in total im getting more concerned about what impact this may have for other aspects of the game, mainly the 4v6 party debate and the incorporation of blank merc companions. I could see larian keeping the party size at 4 (not a fan of btw) bc there is a limited roster to work with (which may be even more limited post act 1 companion/map locks - also not a fan of) and just rely on modders to up it to a party of 6. like others have posted, one npc per class i would have assumed being the bg standard, and then taking into alignment, you have a minimum of 24 possible good v evil npcs but it seems that larian prefers their origin character approach and supplemental mercenaries to round out a party of 4. While i dont dislike the merc approach (pretty sure we havent seen this in game yet) i would likely have preferred if larian chose one or the other - all origin characters that are full fleshed out but limited in number or all merc companions that have some limited dialogue but are larger in number and more variety in class, race, alignment, etc. irregardless, for both options i still think 6 party slots is more in the spirit of bg but we'll have to wait to see the direction/implementation larian chooses
