I don't care for the male human with a sword ( though I liked Wyll), I think, it's time to break some traditions honestly.
I want a dwarf companion, a halfling ( that we were robbed of in BG3 - I will never shut up about Helia) and a lizard - all with interesting backstories and not with romances in mind. I feel the need to repeat myself from the other thread, but I didn't do that when BG3 was in development and let the horny fancrowds have their saying and it resulted in dumbed down character development, a horny druid companion with no quest but a pretty graphic romance scene and a half finished drow companion.
This is no hate for Halsin and Minthara, but they could have done with a bit more character development honestly.
Oh and of course I don't want to loose my none active party. I love switching out and coming back to camp to have some interesting conversations. And I know, we won't get it, but I would love a party limit of six.
Oh no.
I will probably play as human female, and a human male with a sword (and some brain) as companion would be very welcomed, as well as some human and elven females. They could also wield a sword btw. Judging from Larian experience, they will also all be broken enough to be not that boring.
So don't defy tradition. Just add enough of the uglier race options as companions, to grant diversity and especially more race-based lore.
I prefer the party of 4 also out of laziness. It's a turn-based game, so you don't play your char but all chars of the party. You don't even have the chance to turn difficulty down and let the AI do the companions. 4 is interesting and manageable enough, for my taste.
Play, what you want, no one is stopping you and I never said, people can't play, what they want, but yes, it is time to break traditions with companions and BG3 did at least something right with giving us a female gith warrior instead of the traditional male human fighter or paladin. Lae'zel did give us insight into a culture, that isn't as well known and done to death like the more common DnD cultures and races, she also is one of the best written companions with a great character development, personal story and ties to the main story.
In this case, making the warrior in your group something else than the cliche human fighter payed off.
I'm not generally against that trope: Alistair in DAO worked well and because of the depicted society, he had to be male and human for his backstory to make sense. The same is not true in the world of Faerun, which is much less patriarchal and human centered.
I don't know enough about Divinity yet, but I like to shake things up. Alistair worked in his setting, Lae'zel worked in her setting and maybe, Divinity finds it's own spin on an original warrior character.
I don't like the same tropes repeated to death. I feel that a lot of companies are stuck repeating the same tropes over and over again. This is an RPG, so I hope, that they come up with some more unique characters and stories.
I won't address your comment about uglier races, since that is just unnecessarily rude.
