The game has definitely has also made me think about how I treat my companions. It most of all has made me think about how to portray a relationship that favours equality and partnership, in a medium in which the player by default has all the control, or how to write a flexible script with dramatic tension, when you cannot really anticipate the player navigating it.
A medium in which the player has all control by default seems to me to be an inherently bad idea. I can't think of any way at all to portray a relationship favoring equality and partnership in this situation. Only the player themselves with their headcanon can “lower” this topic in their perception and behave with their companions from a position of equality and partnership. As if to forget about the existence of this control. But then there is the question about conflict with a companion - if there is a serious conflict that results in the companion leaving or being banished from the group, it is usually perceived as normal, you didn't get along, you may not like the companion. You can reveal their character in another playthrough, roleplay another character they get along with, or just wave them off. But in the case when a companion is dependent - your Tav becomes actually a killer of this person, there is no difference between a fight to the death (and it would even be much more fair) and expulsion of the companion from the group. Voluntary departure of a companion looks like a suicidal act, even as some manipulation on the part of the plot - you either do what this “suicidal person” wants, or you approve of their suicide. It should have at least implemented an ambush option in this case, an attempt by the companion to somehow get hold of a vital artifact, steal it or something. After all, does this companion want to live or not? Perhaps a variant in which people with different personalities find themselves coincidentally connected to each other, get into a common misfortune, and can't break that connection until they solve the problem could be tried in an “everyone is connected to everyone” format, where everyone needs to be in the group to stay alive. Yes, this would prevent them from breaking the link at all, but it would also create an interesting situation where people with different personalities and possibly opposing beliefs, despite everything, still have to cooperate, find some common ground, understand each other, etc.
About the scenario - in classic RPGs, as a rule, the principle of having a positive, neutral and negative line in each dialog is applied. This is the most primitive minimum, it is rather, three mandatory directions, on which you can further build advanced variants. Most of the emotional reactions of the players can be tried to be reduced to the scheme: “love/like/want to help/I agree”, “basically don't care/why not? /funny/” (different variants of joking remarks can also be considered neutral, although they can deviate towards a positive or negative key) and “hate/don't want to/I won't”. This is a very primitive scheme, but ignoring one of these aspects by the script can have a bad effect on both the roleplay and the player's perception of the story. In some games, alignment (LG, NG, CG, CG, LN, N, CN, LE, NE, CE) is attached to the lines. In romantic lines it is easiest to anticipate the player who loves this character (quite logical, it's a romance), you can also anticipate the negative reaction of the player who did not like this or that behavior, they want to express themselves or even break off the relationship (well, with this in BG3 there are no problems, negative lines in the romance is full, here they did not spare, unlike the first option). With the other options, of course, much more difficult, there may be a lot of nuances of behavior in this or that situation. Can help knowledge of psychology, communication directly with players, if the game is in early access, considering the proposals of players, if the game continues after the release is in the process of development. Here is important flexibility of thinking, the absence of any predetermined “iron” narrative, when the story must develop only in this way, and not otherwise, the desire of the author to show and reveal the character from different sides, and not to impose one option, as in a book or movie.
