Hey there, caranic;
Are you, perchance, using a mod that allows you to give your companions, shall we say..."non-standard", equipment?
After having played MotA several times, I added such a mod recently and discovered that not only did I expereince the exact same issue as you, but when I copied that character/save over to a completely different install on my Win7 rig, (I usually playing on my Win8.1 Pro/64-bit machine) I could choose NO companions to accompany me. None. The Party-Picker stage was empty. 😕mileyfrustrated:
Hoping that setting everyone back to their default equipment will resolve this. I'll post the results.