edit: Well, after reading the linked blog post, I want to add something.
It creates a bond between everybody that just feels organic like few games ever have. Only problem, like Baldur’s Gate, you sadly can’t take them all with you at once. And it’s possible to miss certain members altogether if you don’t find certain items, or say the right things.
I kinda just realized that there were more than six characters to get in this game when I had played through it and read about it somewhere. This really amazed me. Instead of me "choosing my own adventure", the game chose it for me. While I played the game, it felt like this was the definite story of The Nameless One, I was experiencing, and not me messing around in a gameworld and using the characters like I please.