Zanzoken
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2014
- Messages
- 3,558
This is going to be a bit of a rant but I just need to get it off my chest.
I'm tired of every fucking RPG forcing me to play with their whiny ass companions. They are not well written, they are not interesting, they don't add to the experience -- and most of the time, they are actually fucking annoying and just make me want to quit the game.
Shadowrun: Hong Kong is the title that triggered this post. I finally got around to playing it and came in with moderate expectations after the previous two installments, though perhaps I should've expected this companion bullshit after Dragonfall -- "Monika, oh Monika, how will our lives ever go on without you". But I managed to get through that because the gameplay was pretty good.
Let me not digress, though -- Duncan, Gobbett, and is0BeL or however the fuck you spell it are some of the worst companions I've ever seen. Oh no, you abandoned me, oh no, I had a rough childhood, same old blah blah blah. It is completely unbelievable that any of these soft ass motherfuckers would last two seconds in the Shadowrun world. They are useless in combat, they are annoying, and even with skipping every optional dialogue possible I still have to constantly listen to them.
(Side note, Gaichu is actually pretty interesting and mostly keeps his mouth shut, so well done there.)
Of course you don't technically have to use them, I know. But the other runners cost money and the game is obviously not balanced for hiring a whole crew every time out -- the payouts are low enough that you'd literally be losing money every mission, much less being able to afford new equipment. So I'm stuck basically having to solo the game while the most these guys can manage is to soak up damage or throw a heal in every now and then.
Obviously this problem is not limited to Shadowrun. Most other major RPGs are doing the same thing, and now it's pretty much standard that we need a cast of imaginary friends to endlessly whine and nag us throughout our journey. I say fuck that. Writing all these companions soaks up a ton of dev time, and I would much rather see those writing resources go into more interesting things like villains, factions, and world design.
That doesn't necessarily mean rolling a party of blank slates from start to finish, IWD style -- although I would greatly prefer that to status quo. We've seen some interesting attempts at creating personality and reactivity in party NPCs. Larian experimented with broad personality types in D:OS, and the Shadowrun series I was just blasting has the Etiquette system, which if applied to companions could actually create character development while also having legit in-game effects -- a win/win in my book and maybe something that has potential if turned into a serious feature.
Anyway -- the takeaway is, fuck shitty RPG writers and their shitty companions. It would be nice if we always had the option to roll our own dudes. Then it would be great if we could use them to kill yours.
I'm tired of every fucking RPG forcing me to play with their whiny ass companions. They are not well written, they are not interesting, they don't add to the experience -- and most of the time, they are actually fucking annoying and just make me want to quit the game.
Shadowrun: Hong Kong is the title that triggered this post. I finally got around to playing it and came in with moderate expectations after the previous two installments, though perhaps I should've expected this companion bullshit after Dragonfall -- "Monika, oh Monika, how will our lives ever go on without you". But I managed to get through that because the gameplay was pretty good.
Let me not digress, though -- Duncan, Gobbett, and is0BeL or however the fuck you spell it are some of the worst companions I've ever seen. Oh no, you abandoned me, oh no, I had a rough childhood, same old blah blah blah. It is completely unbelievable that any of these soft ass motherfuckers would last two seconds in the Shadowrun world. They are useless in combat, they are annoying, and even with skipping every optional dialogue possible I still have to constantly listen to them.
(Side note, Gaichu is actually pretty interesting and mostly keeps his mouth shut, so well done there.)
Of course you don't technically have to use them, I know. But the other runners cost money and the game is obviously not balanced for hiring a whole crew every time out -- the payouts are low enough that you'd literally be losing money every mission, much less being able to afford new equipment. So I'm stuck basically having to solo the game while the most these guys can manage is to soak up damage or throw a heal in every now and then.
Obviously this problem is not limited to Shadowrun. Most other major RPGs are doing the same thing, and now it's pretty much standard that we need a cast of imaginary friends to endlessly whine and nag us throughout our journey. I say fuck that. Writing all these companions soaks up a ton of dev time, and I would much rather see those writing resources go into more interesting things like villains, factions, and world design.
That doesn't necessarily mean rolling a party of blank slates from start to finish, IWD style -- although I would greatly prefer that to status quo. We've seen some interesting attempts at creating personality and reactivity in party NPCs. Larian experimented with broad personality types in D:OS, and the Shadowrun series I was just blasting has the Etiquette system, which if applied to companions could actually create character development while also having legit in-game effects -- a win/win in my book and maybe something that has potential if turned into a serious feature.
Anyway -- the takeaway is, fuck shitty RPG writers and their shitty companions. It would be nice if we always had the option to roll our own dudes. Then it would be great if we could use them to kill yours.