To me the commitment comment just seems like a joke in an update about romance.
In
an early EA stream one of the writers said one of the reasons to have a fixed party after the first act was that it was difficult to continue companion quests in later acts if all the earlier parts of the companion quest were missed because the companion was not in the party.
That doesn’t seem to make any sense. In previous games you met potential companions throughout the game and it didn’t have any bearing on doing their quests. This also suggests that you meet all companions inside Act 1 which is really sad because it takes away any spontaneity of meeting any new companions after Act 1. Another strange Larianism it would seem.
This is almost certainly due to the companions all having to be origin characters by definition. This is why my opinion is that Larian:
1. Needs to ditch the system all together. (Probably not going to happen and maybe it shouldn't if a lot of their player base really enjoys it)
2. Or a better solution, in my opinion... let's say that you have ideas for like 10-15 companions. Make the ones you consider the best ideas, 3-5 of them origin companions and make the rest 'sidekicks'. Characters who can become party members that still have some quests and stories around them, could even be romance options and stuff like that, but they are not characters you can actually play. This would allow you to introduce them in later acts, not tie them to the beginning of the game or have to share so many similarities with one another. It would even open up the ability to tell different kinds of stories with them.
Just based off the responses earlier in this thread it does seem some people really enjoy the origin character thing - which is cool. I actually prefer pre-defined main characters (as an example using CDPR games - I much prefer the more defined Geralt of The Witcher over the more vague build your own V in Cyberpunk 2077). But that being said for party based games like this and with Larian's approach, I much prefer the build your own character thing.
I think a lot of that is probably because none of the DOS2 characters really clicked with me though. I loved them all as companions, but I didn't see myself really playing any of them. Even when I tried I wasn't a particularly big fan of it.
The same goes for Baldur's Gate 3. I like all of the companions so far (some more than others) - but I don't really see myself playing as any of them so much as wanting them as party members.
