I don't care much about how the companions look, but I care way more about how they're written. And the more time I spend in Pathfinder WotR beta, the more I realize that the BG3 companions have a long road to go before they are even comparable in terms of an overall package. The WotR companions feel like an actual party of friends and yet still manage to be incredibly diverse in motivations. Daeran's personal quest in chapter 2 really emphasizes this - think the camp party scene, except way better executed because the companions and characters are actually interacting with each other, instead of only having things to say to the player. (Though it also really helps that their backgrounds are actually closely tied to the actual setting and plot itself - even when they're not in the main adventuring party, they are known to be doing their own things, instead of merely standing around waiting for the player character to return.)
The BG3 companions in comparison all feel like they're written in their own separate world, to an almost incredibly cynical degree. The BG3 companions are perhaps more appealing than most other cRPG companions on an individual basis, but at the moment, it really feels like there's zero chemistry between them as an actual party at all. I guess in the context of BG3's story, it makes sense - but any progress I made towards actually befriending them kind of felt very fake and gamey in the long term.
That said, now that I think about it, the BG3 companions never really say anything (as in, having voiced lines) when you select them to move or act in combat, while the companions of most other cRPGs will. It doesn't sound like a major thing, but it's a small detail that goes a long way towards subtly fleshing out their personalities. For example, Ember from WotR has exploration dialogue that can range from cute innocent elf, to saying some profound things on the true nature of the world without herself realizing how much she's actually making sense. (The Pathfinder games are already known to go a step beyond most cRPGs in this category, by even having party banter during long rest sequences too.)
BG3 may already be planning to rectify this, but I'm not that confident, as I'm fairly sure the DOS2 companions never actually said anything while fighting (besides shared generic lines like 'I shall yield to none!') or during general exploration either. The other part is that the devs are heavily hinting that we're going to be facing another DOS2 type situation where we end up losing everyone not in our active party at the end of Act 1 - and so the logic might be, why even invest in more inter-party dialogue if you're going to lose all but 3 of them fairly early in the game?
