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.
Something I've wondered about is giving companions more autonomy.
The industry has set a standard with companions where they simply sit in your camp (After immediately considering you the leader of their group) until such a time when you decide to take them with you on your journey. At which point they do exactly what you tell them until you dump them back into camp.
Which is not condusive to good characterization and essentially makes all companions your slaves within the game (Which often helps make romance writing feel strange as a result because of how one dimensional it is. IF a companion commences a relationship it's due to the player initiating it)
While I believe we have the technological capacity to allow companions to do their own things.
For example, non-active party members won't just sit in camp all day twiddling their thumbs. But they'll go into the world and do things. The PC and their active party could happen across them doing things, potentially helping them out (Allowing organic character story progress without the trope of swapping in characters to an active party to do their personal quest when you feel like it) or leaving them alone, or having other companions help them (Depending on their relationship perhaps someone might leave the players active party to go help their friend).
Companions could develop relationships with other companions, that is if the PC isn't making a (Successful) attempt to woo a character involved. (It's still possible to keep the Playersexual nature of companions so that players can still romance the character they want... But it's not a clear cut case of the companion will only accept the player and that all the player has to do is eventually pick the right options to enter the romance)
Having more failstates for relationships and companionship would also help. Often such things are exceptions (Like in WotR if you become a Lich all the good aligned characters leave you). Having more acts that cause a companion to end a relationship or simply leave the party (Possibly both - A common reaction to a break up is wanting space from the now ex-partner) would create more sense of the companion having their own thoughts and opinions over the players actions.
While it's unlikely that such things would completely fix the aforementioned issue with relationships in video games, it would at least make progress. Towards making more organic characters that are individuals and not just pawns of the player.
