Mass effect 2 was the reason the story didn’t hold up for ME3. Companions from what we’ve seen do very little in combat outside of cool combos. The reason why people loved the companion focus of ME2 was because the companions are actually interesting and somewhat malleable. If BioWare doesn’t mail that in veilguard, it’s gonna blow up in their face.

It's worth considering: we didn't see any darkspawn in the gameplay reveal--only in the initial trailer. I'm willing to bet they look better in-game.