Personally not into meeting all recruitable companions within the first 30 minutes of playing the game, both from a narrative and immersion sense. I like spontaneity and surprises. And I like a large pool of companions from which to recruit, swapping out as I see fit...but then again it's just what I'm used to from previous games. Hopefully Larian will dispense with the God awful notion of party locking after Act 1.
I think the ideal situation is when none of the potential companions are gated behind tenths of hours of progress, but unless you go out of your way to gather them, they will be introduced gradually and organically. When replaying the game if you have a party in mind you can gather the team in BG2 and Deadfire as soon as "the game proper" begin. Still in both cases I have been running into new companions in 10+, 20+ hours (Deadfire is still awkardly frontloaded with companions - it doesn't have BG2 convenient hall of mercenery setting, that allows for introduction of muliple companions in a way that feels natural).
