Rather, both KOTORs were designed so that the primary option was to control one character while your companions ran on autopilot; the other, slghtly less supported option was to pause and control them all with autoqueues. The camera and so forth made it difficult to control everyone in real-time, which was my point. It was exactly the same as NWN1; it wasn't designed to control a large party like you did with IE, it was designed for pause-and-cumbersome-control or letting them autopilot.
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Unfortunately the action queues didn't work, because the moment you switched characters the AI would overrule your choices.