Create our own Companions?

It could be a useful option for a no-companions playthrough for those interested, so that you won't have to engage in combat alone, otherwise who would choose it when you can have a properly written companion with dialogue and companion quest.

I wouldn't mind it as an option but not as the entrée. Dragon Age's strength is the characters and writing for me so ultimately if I want to play a game where I can dictate my companions I would just play a different game

The less defined a character is the less story they can be given, and that works for the likes of the PC of a Fallout game, but for a companion in a Dragon Age game it would be a disaster. They would become a mannequin with emotes rather than a complex character with a realistic backstory.

On a purely cosmetic level it might work, but that's a waste of time and effort on the part of the devs, and also a massive loss of creativity.

Well, such combat use only companions could be potentially interesting.

I wouldn’t be opposed, as long as it didn’t result in less content of full companions.

So basically like in Dragon's Dogma, where you create your own Pawn?

It's fun there, but I wouldn't want it in a Dragon Age game.

Having played Baldur's Gate where I only ever used game characters and Icewind Dale where I created my own, there are merits to both approaches. However, those were the days when dialogue was more limited and with a silent PC, so having an entire party of silent characters wasn't so jarring. It would be odd if you had a voiced PC and yet other characters were mute or only made brief comments like "I don't approve". With the Baldur's Gate game the possibility to create your own party was contained in multi-player, so that is presumably how it could be made to work in the present. Icewind Dales was always only ever your own party of companions so it had been designed that way.  Pillars of Eternity is far more like Baldur's Gate in the way the mechanics work than Dragon Age and once again there is a silent PC.

As other posters have pointed out, there is the danger that trying to introduce such a concept would only be a drain on resources in other areas and could reduce the number of fully fleshed out companions by the writers. Perhaps the compromise might be having a sibling character (or possibly a friend), as in DA2 and MEA, who has a part to play in the story and is fully scripted and voiced but you get much greater input in customising them, deciding on their gender, appearance and even possibly their class. That way you would have had a part in creating this companion but they would still be fully integrated into the story and thus interact properly with other companions and your PC.

I recently played through PoE on the PS4 & enjoyed the game & while I did make a couple of my own companions to keep at my stronghold for events until I recruited more people I found that it was kind of redundant for a couple of reasons:

1: I do not like Durance & so made a priest to accompany me, only to find I needed to keep that sod in the party for the whole bloody game due to his personal mission, so a waste there for poor gameplay design.

2: As everyone else is saying here, you miss out on unique dialogue & content options.

So yes, while it was nice to go, hmm, I'd rather have 'this' instead it doesn't really work for companions.

If the war table was back then I would be behind creating our own agents for the text based missions therein.

Just my thoughts.

Terrible idea...if I wanted to play a game full of bland unengaging characters I'd buy a Bethesda game.

Never played the game so I'll take your word for it that he's a good one. 

Like Pillars of Eternity? (I think they allow you to make companions but I haven't played the game in a while.) If that's the case no thanks, I prefer the depth of written characters.

I'm already fully capable of writing my own stories with my own characters any time I feel like. That's literally the only purpose of my degree.

I play games because I want to enjoy other stories, and experience something I would not have thought of on my own.