fdrty, with regard to Hawke I think part of the problem is that the friendship/rivalry system is all over the place. The idea is that your companions either agree with you or at least respect you, even if they don't agree. That respect keeps them around. The problem is when you don't have high friendship or rivalry and you're stuck in that grey middling zone - that's when their loyalty is in question and that's when they can turn on you in the Gallows, if you haven't nursed any kind of relationship with them (or haven't learned to game the convoluted F/R paths!), that sense of loyalty is lost. I would say that if you keep everybody in the grey zone, they have no reason to follow you except for wanting to be around/influence a powerful person, I guess.
It is one thing to talk about the 'idea' of a game system but the truth is that we do not interact with these elements in a vaccuum. We have to understand how they inform player action and how they are woven into the game as a whole. I think you're blaming the wrong thing for the issue of your companions not making sense as a group.
The 'grey zone' is likely the natural path for most Hawkes to play. The game is not intended to be played with a tab open on the wiki. To say that 'If you game the system, you can have results which are narratively satisfying' is either a failure of the system or the narrative, and I don't think the system is to blame. Many people criticise it because it's near impossible to keep everyone satisfied, or because you can get rivalry points for rejecting Anders, but that struggle to maintain friendships with everyone is precisely the point. The problem is that, like the paragade system of ME, being in the grey zone yields the least results, and as such is a less viable playstyle than either of the extremes - instead of a series of individual choices, the narrative forces players into demonstrating more hardline beliefs than we are probably willing to commit our Hawkes to.
I actually really like the friendship/rivalry system. Not only does it support that your companions have their own beliefs and goals, but that they react in a dynamic way to your actions, and how they affect those beliefs and goals. It is a far better way of gauging the moral quality of your choices than the paragade system in ME, because there is no 'right' or 'wrong', just what people like and dislike, which is informed by their character's experience, prejudice and circumstance. The system supports their characterization.
The problem is in the writing. The companions are so politicized that there is no realistic way for them to cooperate, never mind become friends. This is not to say that characters should not have strong views. Vivienne feels just as strongly about mages as Anders does - she just doesn't go on about it as much because she's in a narrative which does not call that aspect of her beliefs into question constantly by also demanding action on that very subject by the player. But then, if their views on the most important subject of the narrative are diametrically opposed then they should not be able to cooperate. They stay together because this is a bioware rpg and you have to have a diverse and interesting bunch of companions, not because it matches their goals. Character agency here is sacrificed for player convenience.
If you compare these companions to DAI's, the difference with DAI is that the companions there justify their presence by:
1 Broadly sharing the goal of the Inquisition, that is, to restore peace to Thedas during its crisis. This is the most important goal for the characters to share, as it is the player's main objective. Everything the player does is in service to this goal.
2 Having skills or knowledge which makes them useful to the Inquisition - Varric's knowledge of Corypheus and Kirkwall, Iron Bull is a strong warrior, Solas knows about the fade, Dorian knows about the Venatori and time magic, etc.
3 They have ulterior motives and they seek to use the political power of the Inquisition to their benefit when the crisis is over - Iron Bull spies, Vivienne is aiming to become Divine, Solas wants his orb, etc.
I could have easily said the same for Origin's characters. They all have a common goal and a reason to follow the warden, they all offer something to the warden which can aid him in his quest, be it expertise or skills relevant to the main threat, and they all have their own goals which differentiate them and keep them as separate entities.
If we look at DA2's characters, can we say the same?
1 They have wildly different goals. Not only do they come together for a great number of reasons (Isabela needs help, Anders gets roped into an expedition, Merrill is exiled by her clan) but many of those reasons don't actually make sense for them to become Hawke's companions on his personal quest.
But what is absolutely the worst is how they have goals which are diametrically opposed to each other, and yet they stay together as a group of companions. Isabela wants to steal, Aveline wants to reduce crime. Anders wants to free mages, Sebastian wants the circles to be upheld. There is no way in which these character's cooperation is justified, given that the points of contention are not side elements but huge parts of the main story (or what can be called that).
2 The characters are skilled, but they have little specifically which makes them of use to Hawke in his quests - this is dues, in no small part, to a game which doesn't have a main questline, but is basically a disparate collection of sidequests. Isabela is important for what she knows (knowledge which could be imparrted in a small conversation, not knowledge like expertise), not what she can do - and, quite frankly, if she was honest sooner, Kirkwall would have been a far more peaceful place (she's actually an example of her goals directly conflicting with the players, which should make her an antagonist). Similarly, Anders is important because he is a warden with deep road maps, then his narrative function becomes to either oppose or support the player's political stance on magic. The problem with this is that in most games you would acquire the knowledge or item of use, and not the character. You do not recruit everyone who gives you information or items.
3 They do not have ulterior motives because they are not forced together by a common goal. Instead, those motives are their main objectives. What we have is not only do they not share the same goal, but they have goals which directly conflict against one another, as what would be ulterior motives become their primary motivation in absence of a common goal. No amount of respect for Hawke can narratively justify why people stay together with someone that they might not even like, or actively dislike, in order to further goals which they do not share, or which actively contradict their own.
The characters themselves fall into villainous archetypes: The well intentioned extremist who commits an atrocity for noble reasons (Anders); The misguided scientist who unleashes an abomination (Merrill); The tortured, self-destructive escapee on a rampage of revenge (Fenris); The stickler who obstructs the player with their insistence on following a ruleset which is clearly broken and corrupt (Aveline); the thief whose selfishness plunges the city into chaos (Isabela).
TLDR cos that was pretty damn long: The characters of DA2 were interesting but they lacked a common goal, and because it was possible, or even likely, for the player to not be friends with them it made no sense for them to follow Hawke. This was either caused or made worse by the storyline, which, rather than having one huge threat from the outset which would galvanise disparate characters together to oppose it, instead lacked the driving motivating factor the other games had.
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I mean, when I was younger... I was terrible. I don't do it anymore.
