Call me greedy, but I genuinely feel like if you had that choice, there should be the third but difficult choice of having both. It shouldn't be easy, like how it isn't easy having Edwin and Dynaheir in the same party in Bg1 cause they try to murder each other, but it is possible and difficult to keep both to the end. And I don't want them to be mindless zombies, but removing them arbitrarily feels worse than them just mindlessly following. Also your examples don't seem to work out, cause I don't see Volo and Wyll, or Shadowheart and Halsin, or even Astarion and Alfira being exclusive from each other. I want them to be characters, but I don't want it to be that Astarion happens to die or is removed cause the game forced me to not have him at the moonrise towers section cause of a party limit. And now for the rest of the game I do not have access to Astarion. That feels bad to me. Now if Astarion left and I can recruit him later, thats fine. Thats more dynamic. But him being out from my party permanently would be the worst case scenario for me.
And yes, to me that'd be bad. That'd be a poor way to enforce a poor limitation that is honestly arbitrary that would also hurt the game. Just like how it hurt DOS2.
Edit: To me, companions should be unique characters and therefore not replaceable. If they should die in such a way that we can not resurrect then, then they should be dead. And there shouldn't be someone immediately taking their place as a replacement because that's a copout for death. But death should be a consequence of our actions individually for that character. Essentially, it should be a consequence of our choices during their questlines and a result of choices we make in regards to each individual. If we can diffuse the situation between Laezel and Shadow heart, sure one of them can die, that makes sense. But a blanket dismissal or killing doesn't, even when the plot forces it. Blanket X characters can no longer be companions or die because they weren't in the active party just feels bad to me. And if I got replacements I'd just feel sour to those replacements. And replacements can work, just not a blanket thing like that, and not for every character. Tangential, one replacement that did work for me was a character in ME2 that can replace one of your party members, it works there because everything feels like a consequence of a past action, either by the player or the companion. And the replacement is built up and has a connection with that companion. It wasn't arbitrary and was a planned out conflict. So I'd be fine with a quest like that, but that's different from having to commit to an active party after act 1.
