Ended up doing a second playthrough despite my previous feelings and even wrote a partial walkthrough along the way.
While I was apparently wrong about camp conversations being important, your choices during the game do in fact have a rather large impact on the journey. Not so much the ending though, which only has a few variations. It mainly seems to be how many party members you have access to and whether or not you get a perspective choice in the last chapter.
That’s still more variation than most RPGs can offer though and it’s definitely interesting to run through once or twice. I think I may have to give the Banner Saga a second chance.