I never had Minsc in my party in BG1 or 2 and would have gladly played BG3 without giant space hamsters. But this is Larian and they're not passing by an opportunity to add something silly for the memes. They thrive on the badger memes after the Druid patch. I love humor, but unfortunately not this kind.
Dragon Age does have good companions. They're believable and more relatable and not just memes with crazy stories. And when there IS a crazy epic story in DA (Morrigan's mother), they take their time telling that story properly even over several different games instead of just unload everything at once the first chance they get (Gale, Karlach).
I find myself strongly agreeing (though admittedly I did take Minsc in my party fairly regularly).
I was going to suggest that it seems to me that it was the personalities of companions in other similar games of this genre that were the most memorable thing, not their backstories, but I am not sure if that is just my memory failing me.
There's something in the style of Larian's writing which can come across very similar in manner to a Marvel or the recent Star Wars films but I can't think of the words to describe it.
