Hace El Oso
Arcane
So you're into wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle game design, eh? You still have mercenaries for hire if you dislike the premade characters, but there's no point in having half-assed companions whose characterization amounts to looks and a few lines of inconsequential dialogue. Fully fleshed out companions on the other hand are both better characterized and have their own content associated with them in the form of quests and (presumably) interact with and/or impact the story.Honestly if that would the choice I'd take Deadfire henchmen over "We'll have just six-seven companions in the entire game because we want each one of them to be a fucking origin story" (and cost ten times as much to make).
I appreciate the benefits of having more deeply developed companions, but I do miss the BG1 school of companions where you had enough to choose from that you could accept casualties and keep playing.
It helped build the feeling of actually running an itinerant party of adventurers. After a while reminiscing was a bit like this: