Larian talked up their companions (and romances) a lot and it turned out the check bounced. You start the game as a bunch of dudes and you end the game as a bunch of dudes. Camp interactions almost non-existent. Banter anemic. Romances are 'every RPG romance' despite advertisement otherwise while at the same time feeling, hollow, compromised or unfinished. Not helped by platonic relationships getting the short end of the stick by an entire foot. Even the low hanging fruit of having custom stat blocks for their (often meme-tier) backstory was completely passed up.
The Origin mechanic was a mistake and is a big part of why this feels like Divinity 3 than anything else. Literally every companion's story save Astarion is tied to the main narrative, often via asinine coincidences, and the original plan was to rope Astarion in to it too. By Larian's own numbers, the vast majority of people make their own custom character and the few that do choose to play an Origin gets no VO and barely reacts to their own story anyway, so what was the point?
