I mean proper NPCs that you pick along the way, and can have conversations with, that add to the storyline.
Unfortunately, naw -- none of those.
It probably would've been more interesting if the game would allow for say your self-created party of four AND say two proper NPC's as "cohorts". Maybe even creating three self-created and then finding
three proper NPC's as "cohorts" would've been cool, too.
There's a lot of advantages to creating a party, of course -- with gameplay and all of that jazz. But, yeah -- there's a lot of dialogue, and whatnot you'd miss b/c...well, the company didn't tailor-make every facet of interaction for your character; you'd have to do that for a mod or something, I'd say.
Your "cohort" might make a comment, when you're questing -- likely, won't be voice-acted, either. It'll just appear over their head as dialogue -- a la Guild Wars.
Regardless, hey -- I like
Storm, as it feels reminiscent of old school (i.e. the gameplay, way you traverse the world, having bigger parties), even though some of it feels really quite modern (i.e. the graphics).