In EA every companion's dream person was allegedly deeply tied to them and their insecurities, weaknesses, and hidden desires (for a custom PC those amounted to power and hanky-panky, with any hopes that it gets in any way developed dying together with Daisy). Lae'zel's was Vlaakith, Shadowheart's was her old (boy)friend (who in the main game seems to have been turned into Nocturne...?), Gale's was Mystra and so on. Given the premise of the "loss of self" and everyone having a moment where they are inches away from their worldview or their grasp on themselves falling apart, wouldn't it have made perfect sense for said desires and weaknesses to be used as a way for the tadpole/Absolute to try to sway them over? Lae'zel could become the ultimate warrior of her people, Shadowheart could get revenge on Shar's cult and Shar herself... Cue having to convince them otherwise or watch them succumb, and it resulting in a split of loyalties down the line when the time comes to pick the side.
This was fascinating to me as someone who didn't touch EA. I think that might go a long way to explain what I'm feeling with the companions in the full release, which is that they do seem to have a lot of thematic parallels (having curses, having complicated relationships with gods/masters, etc) that the story just... didn't actually make the connection between? Or made it feel like a weird coincidence, rather than something the Absolute might actively have been looking for. Knowing that each person would originally see a different visitor in their dreams and that this was going to be a more direct comparison between the companions does make some sense, although I do think it would probably feel a bit too contrived if they went with that. The uh... setup for Daisy on that is something I am definitely glad to have skipped, even if Dream Visitor is rather bland.
The thing that really frustrates me at times is that after Lae'zel and Shadowheart, they seemed to have completely given up on the companions having any actual reason to have come into contact with the main story, aside from being randomly abducted by the illithid.
For example, Gale is an experienced wizard who's been cursed by Netherese magic, which he's spent the last year studying. The Absolute, meanwhile, is affected by Netherese magic. This feels ripe for a setup where Gale sensed that the cult of the Absolute (even if he did not know them by name) was touched by Netherese magic and came to the area to investigate -- in a heroic interpretation, he came here knowing how dangerous this was and saw it as his duty to intervene, despite being weakened. In a more selfish interpretation, he came here hoping that these fellow scholars of Netherese magic might hold the key to curing him. It may not be obvious that this is connected to the tadpoles at first, but it'll hit around Act 2.
Wyll and Karlach both have ties to the hells and devils in their history, and the interests of devils seem to be hovering around the periphery here -- Zariel previously made a deal with Gortash. Mizora saw fit to investigate the cult herself. Raphael is monitoring the situation and looking for opportunities. Personally, I feel like having Zariel/Mizora grant their blessing to the heroes' quest to destroy the brain was a bit too... convenient. First of all, Zariel worked with Gortash in the past. Was she blind to this? And second, surely there's some way they could be trying to exploit the situation, even if they want the Absolute defeated in the end (Raphael gets closer to this). It seems like there was room for the devil's involvement and their opinions on the upstart "god" of the Absolute to be more developed, and it could have provided a very interesting perspective on everything the Absolute is doing, especially if the Absolute was basically viewed as a rival for gobbling up souls after luring them in with devil-like means.
Both of these seem like opportunities to have these characters start out thinking they were pursuing unrelated plots and happened to get tadpoled along the way, only for it to turn out that they were all investigating different branches of the larger conflict.
Another little nugget stuck in my mind was that, if the Absolute can do things like protect a vampire from the sun, it seems like that could be a marketing pitch for the cult -- join the Absolute, and be cured of curses, disease, infirmities, etc, and the Absolute helps those that the gods have turned their backs on. I probably wouldn't have made Astarion knowingly approach the cult (perhaps they approached him with the pitch / kidnapped him to test the effects of the tadpoles), for multiple reasons, but it just seemed like this was used as a throwaway excuse for why Astarion mechanically works like any other character, when it could have been woven into the narrative of the Absolute's doctrine.
