You can't change companion weapons or armour

I don't think "expressing yourself" is the issue for a lot of us. DAI's crafting system offered a lot of the game's strategic depth. You needed to decide what to optimize, who to optimize it on, and how to employ the limited supply of certain crafting mats. Most of the depth comes from outfitting the squadmates ; obviously the PC gets the best of everything since she's guaranteed to be in every fight.

Well that sucks. Not even being able to change weapons within the type they use? Weird that we have so many options to customize Ryder, but such a historical few for squadmates.

Being pestered by environmental hazards on a frozen planet in full battle armor while Peebee prances around in her midriff-baring outfit is going to feel a bit stupid for sure.

Since you can heavily customize your weapons, AI wouldn't know how to use them anymore. Also gameplaywise, in a shooter you want the player do the shooting and AI is there for show and performing player initiated combos.

There'll probably be DLC for alternative outfits, there isn't really any reason not to have it from technical standpoint.

So they'll become stronger as Ryder level up. I still don't like it, but I guess it should avoid making them becoming useless.

We can.

We can direct them towards a point, and if there's an enemy there they'll attack them. That's it.

Oh okay.

Phew.

It sounded really weird.

Which might be the reason for doing this honestly.  I mean the more options you give the player the more bland everything sometimes feels and the more...thinly spread...everything is...if you can have fewer options you can have a much more defined experience which helps your characters feel more like characters.  Theoretically anyways. 

This is my feelings on the matter. I thought DAI was an elegant solution to those who weren't happy about DA2's limited companion customization while appeasing those like me, who enjoyed each companion having their own distinct flavor of gear. However, obsessively crafting upgraded armor for the 6 companions I kept in rotation probably added about five hours to every playthrough. I mean, at least. 

As for weapons, eh. I feel like weapons were a weird afterthought in ME2, where you can't even directly compare stats, and the upgrade mechanism in ME and ME3 was great for Shepard but got tedious for companions. If they would have added a way to upgrade weapons and mods IN the loadout UI in ME3, it might have worked for me, but getting rid of it completely does, too!

Of course, this is coming from the perspective of someone who doesn't consider promises of customization to include companions. It's fine if it does, and I'll add my DAI squads as being just the freshest and most pattern-coordinated in Thedas, but the PC is all I really care about and I'm just as comfortable letting companions have their own thing as I am pretending like I'm forcing them to look like my backup band.