My favourite companion casts:
Planescape Torment, Pillars of Eternity1, Mass Effect2.
Listen, there is no denying that games with 10plus companions tend to have smaller content for companions. Think not only about “amount of lines” but complexity of personal quests, branching paths of their quests, their integration into conversations.
BG2 had a lot of companions, but they varied greatly in content they had, and that content was on rails.
I think a more interesting question would be: how complex companions need to be?
PoE2 was an interesting experiment: with a cast of companions with really rich integration into conversation, and over complicated relationship system, and romances. It also had “sidekicks” with little dedicated content pre-DLC. Interestingly, while sidekicks were clearly a weaker offering content wise, I know some people preferred them as characters - they had just enough personality injected to create an attachment.
And I still believe that cast of PoE1 was simply stronger, in spite of being simpler mechanically and more modest content wise - they were closer to one would get from fleshed out BG2 companions - linear interactions though with some branching paths. It was enough to create clear story arch’s for each companion, and inject them with personality.
Not that there is no benefit to being more ambitious - I far prefer companions who express themselves through interactions with other NPCs (like PoE2) then lengthy camp conversations (DA:O). Having companions act as representation of the wider world, and amplify reactivity to choices we made is a powerful tool as well. Writing wise I will take one companion like Kim, over wide cast of forgettable archetypes.
Personally I will take fewer companions that I want to travel with, then bunch of characters I don’t care for (like Pathfinder) - being given a choice is hardly appealing if all choices are unenjoyable - BG3 issue for me is less that there won’t be enough companions, but that they all seem to be Anomens.
There is also the case of gameplay consideration - if you have a game with team based combat with wide variety of classes, you kinda need to give players a wide choice of companions to construct the party you want. Be it through sheer number of companions. or allowing for customisation of classes that companions offer.
