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Really sick and tired of Bioware-style companions

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.
 

Maxie

Guest
fact - it's way more important to have well-written NPCs with real agendas which they don't tend to explicitly express the moment you stumble upon them in Bumfuck, Pop. 10 than it is to have any companions whatsoever
 

santino27

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2008
Messages
2,678
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
tldr; shittily written companions are worse than well-written companions (and sometimes than no companions at all).
 

CryptRat

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,548
I hate chosen one stories. I want to create a party, from the start. If I created a party of 4 or 6 characters from the start, then and only then I've generally no problem with additionnal pregenerated or summoned party members, in particular temporary ones.
And if I really have to play pregenerated characters, then at least I want to play a full cast of characters, with no main protagonist, that's not as good as party creation but still more tolerable than a chosen one + companion cast.
 

PEACH

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 22, 2017
Messages
285
Agreed. Dragonfall was like this too, felt like half the game was sitting in base playing psychiatrist.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,050
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Hi I kill people for a job but I also have issues which I'm whiny about, sometimes I will bring up these issues in the heat of combat because that's how professional mercenaries behave.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Sounds like somebody has somehow failed to discovered Izzy's grenade launcher
 

pippin

Guest
The guy still has a point. In Dragonfall the characters had problems too, but they were more or less approachable from an empathy point of view. Reading the whining of your companions in Hong Kong often feels like reading the tumblr of a teenager.
 

garren

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Nov 1, 2007
Messages
2,036
Location
Grue-Infested Darkness
Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 did NPCs and their dismissal right. Random or story-related NPCs that offer to join you at different parts of the game, and you can just tell em to fuck off, so you never see them again. OR tell em not right now, so they'll just stay there or tell you where to find them if you change your mind. None of this "hello we just met oh you don't want me lemme go to your base you didn't tell me about". NO, I don't want to ever see your face again. At least PoE let you kill em for good so I guess that's a way to get rid of them.
 

Vorark

Erudite
Joined
Mar 2, 2017
Messages
1,394
Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 did NPCs and their dismissal right. Random or story-related NPCs that offer to join you at different parts of the game, and you can just tell em to fuck off, so you never see them again. OR tell em not right now, so they'll just stay there or tell you where to find them if you change your mind. None of this "hello we just met oh you don't want me lemme go to your base you didn't tell me about". NO, I don't want to ever see your face again. At least PoE let you kill em for good so I guess that's a way to get rid of them.

Ehh, I prefer BG1 companions to BG2. It's during the latter they started to develop the "biowarean" style, interjecting and causing needless drama. In BG1 they would either join and keep quiet or kill each other.

Speaking of the SR:HK companions -- they were alright, the only annoying one was isobel. I think I got a bug when doing the DLC save import, because the little bitch was super pissed with my PC, lel. Go die in a fire. Duncan was ok too, considering my PC at the time didn't want to be stuck with the old lady calling the shots.
 

Dux

Arcane
Joined
May 26, 2016
Messages
635
Location
Sweden
It's not that difficult to write a good and believable companion. First, let them be useful in unique ways, let their personal stories grow steadily during the entire game and have them actually act as human beings upon introduction. People are generally guarded about their baggage and shit. Seriously, it's not complicated at all. Have some burly zwei-hander motherfucker happen upon your character on the open road, let them shake forearms in a tenuous alliance and then have the aforementioned burly kraut slowly open up about some personal shit - if you really have to have that sort of thing. Characters should be unknown quantities upon first meeting them only to become more fleshed out and defined the longer you travel with them. BioWare can't into this, though, just like a lot of other RPG developers. If you incorporate whiny needy tween nonsense in your companions then you've already lost. Nobody wants to hear that shit.
 

Filthy Sauce

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 26, 2016
Messages
613
Pool of radiance has the best companions. I can beat bioware and beamdog at its own game.

DwarfBoobs.jpg
 

Bruma Hobo

Lurker
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Messages
2,409
I do think followers should behave like real people instead of cold numbers, but fuck me if that means having to romance and/or psychoanalize each of them. At the end of the day, what Ultima VI did (characters with distinct personalities adding some amusing lines during dialogue) is the best approach.
 

ShadowSpectre

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 11, 2017
Messages
333
Location
Limbo
I also liked my IWD companions. I gave them personality by searching for nice artwork online and giving them each a different voice set. Then they all got personalities as the game went on without saying much at all and they all had great stories based upon circumstances during the adventures.

Besides, I swear two of my characters were in love with how great the combos were. Still a better love story than a Biomance. :D
 

*-*/\--/\~

Cipher
Joined
Jul 10, 2014
Messages
909
Reminds me of how much I disliked Imoen in BG2. "I'm afraid, I'm cold, I feel this, I feel that, I wanna pee..." Whine, whine, whine. I'd never bother rescuing her if the story didn't force me to do so. :D
 

Filthy Sauce

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 26, 2016
Messages
613
Wait... Why can't we have the best of both worlds? Wizardry 8 made the foundation of having full character creations that could actually have some level of personality. Its sad nobody has built on this idea.
 

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