Since my reply is just a bigg mess full of spoilers I decided to wrap it all up, so if you have not completed your first game yet, please do not read below it would ruin your first time experience.
When you grow a companionship romantically with an origin character, I have always felt satisfied about it narratively (including Act 3 romances) and that makes me feel like a vocal minority, Ihowever with that being said I can agree there should easily have been more camp party moments in the game but the spots where I find it would make most sense and where I would have placed them are as follow:
[*]When Ketheric Thorm is defeated and everyone catches up with you, it could have culminated into a camp party easily and if you did not yet have a romantic Act 2 scene with a chosen companion this could be the failsafe for it granted your permutation of the path leads into it.
[*]When Orin is defeated, what is left of harpers should have been waiting for you outside its temple congratulating you for an epic moment brought to halt and could easily have led to a camp party event, this would be more tricky as it should come in both elfsong tavern and out in the streets iterations to respect the player agency choices of whether they hired up the whole tavern or not, this is the only moment in the whole game I feel like having new bond-up moments with companions to make sense purely because it would make no sense using it as failsafe for Act 3 romance scenes particular for Karlach as from feasting during camp party leading up to a dinner date woudl be jarring.
Whats with harpers only showing up if you side with Bhaal? loss of opportunity and biggest key moment in the game that can and apparently does make most feel like something is missing as a testament for this topic.
My biggest worry is that just because a character cant be an origin should not have meant that they cant get the origin character treatment, Minthara is so delicately woven into the plot of The Dark Urge origin that this is just a huge mistake and an oversight to not have given her such treatment as they both share a lot of details in common, both are pragmatic strong willed characters, both got victimized by Orin and as result both share history with her for that same reason,
Minthara should have had more bond-up moments throughout each Act of the game at bare minimum specially given how much you potentially give up on from the choices you can make in Act 1, right now it feels like Minthara is held together by stitches that comes loose on the occasion.
