Yet another topic to mull over while we wait... and wait... and wait...

Been playing Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas a lot, and noticed something in Fallout New Vegas, in particular. Companions have their own little stories, and their own interactions both with the world and with other NPCs and each other. That's what makes them interesting and not just bullet shields or mobile turrets. The "problem" is that you can (usually, barring mods) only have one human and one robot companion with you. Using modded companions, however, I was tooling around the Mohave with three human companions and a robot dog. And during the course of at least one quest (mod-added) I picked up a fourth human companion. So we were a party of five (plus dog). That's an awful lot of people. Kind of puts a crimp in the ol' sneaky-sniper gameplay.

I'm creeping along like a mouse and here comes Veronica clanking in her power armor, and Willow blithely commenting on the environment while Vanessa chats up the Robot Dog.

Of course, the easy answer is to CHOOSE to have only one (or no) companions. But I ~do~ hate to miss out on some of the great dialog they offer out of the blue. The dilemma becomes, then, which companion do you use, when? I took out Boone when I went to the NCR bases and sure enough, the NPCs made comments about how, "Wish I had someone from First Recon watching my back!"... because I had Boone with me. But when I have Willow with me, she will offer up gems of wisdom like, "We're in Sloan? There are deathclaws are near here! We need to GO." and of course while fighting deathclaws, she'll whine, "I -hate- deathclaws! I think I peed a little!"

I find myself spending more time trying to complete my Companion quests than I do on the actual main storyline. And that's what prompted this post ----- at what point does a Companion graduate from non-boring-turret/meatshield to helpful amusing comrade and at what point does the companion become the star of the story? If the Companion is SO well developed that you almost consider the companion to be 'your' character and your -actual- character is just the meatshield / turret that is used to advance/discover the Companion's story?

I'm not saying I want dumb companions --- I love Veronica in New Vegas, and Willow (mod companion) is just plain awesome ---- but I worry that sometimes they become too much the focus, both of the story and of the player.

Or am I just reading too much into these Companion quests/interactions?

"Kind of puts a crimp in the ol' sneaky-sniper gameplay."
Lol who needs to sneak when you are traveling with an army?!

On topic: I don't mind having Companions that are so fleshed out that I care about them. I've never had the issue about thinking they were my character though. As to the sneaky thing, I usually just have them wait a distance off while I do my sneaky thing.

You have to admit, Party banter and sidekicks have come a long way. Personally I hope it keeps getting better even if it sidetracks me, Asides whats the point of being a Star unless you have someone round to tell you are.

(I still think my favorite Parties were from Jagged alliance 2 even with how far we have advanced beyond that)

I like learning their story and hearing banter between them, but I would never say that they are a focus in the story. They are a side quest like all the other sidequests just slightly more personal since you've got some attachment to your companions.

Personally, all I ever used is the dogs.

I was a fan of Fawkes. I wish they gave him a fleshed out storyline like the companions in New Vegas.

Actually... that does sound like rather an interesting idea. Would a game work where the player character is just the sidekick, advancing the story (or stories) of the main characters?

I think that might be quite a good game actually, where we don't suddenly advance from somebody with no past to being the saviour of the village/nation/world, but instead remain the rogue, mercenary, or kitchen-boy/girl who gets caught up in someone else's grand adventure

I don't think in Bethesda games there's much risk (or hope ) of the companions advancing beyond companion status. While they're the focus of their own quests, those are always fairly short, and they're rarely more than incidental to the main quest. I suppose the Dad in FO3 came the closest to being a 'main character' in story terms, but we never spent enough time with him or learnt enough about his past for him to even come up to the 'main character' level of some companions in emotional terms.

This was a dilemma I had with Mass Effect, I wanted to have my entire team with me throughout the entire game which isn't possible and would mess with the combat. But that is part of the gameplay, that choice that you have to make about who you want to fight with and who you like to have a dialogue with. I think that in games like Mass Effect and Fallout this adds to the role playing aspect, it's yet another choice that you have to make that shapes the experience, and if you want to know all the outcomes you will have to play the game multiple times. Which adds to the replay value of the experience, I would hate to have them dumb down the story behind companions because it makes them more worth while to play with, and it sounds like your dilemma is that you don't want to play the game a second or third time and that you want to experience everything in one play through. In a game so heavily influenced by choice it shouldn't be possible to get everything in one go, its a sign that Bethesda is doing something right.

I like companion side-stories. I had Willow too - she is awesome.

I feel like companions can add a lot, but I have to actually like them and find them interesting. Otherwise I just sort of park them somewhere and forget they exist. If helps a lot if they comment on things I'm doing or new places we find. It helps if they have their own side-agenda too. I will totally do their side quests if they ask.

Companions are for losers(in RL and FO4)...

Solo Dolo is the REAL way to go.

Trust no one.

Depend on no one for ANYTHING

Real life or a computer game.

Hmm. Whereas I mind having them in "solo" play games (like TES/Fallout 3) but not in party-based games (Bioware stuff, Divinity:OS, Wasteland). In games where it's better to go it alone, having companions with lots of detail is annoying - because you're either stuck dragging them around, or you're missing out on "content" by playing the preferred way.

(Which is why I'd rather than FO4's companions be FO3-style mules rather than NV style "characters". )

Eh, different strokes I guess. I use them mainly as pack mules and some times fire support if my sneaking goes awry and its just a plus for me if they have a good story. Khajiit loves a good story! It is good though that they are optional for people like yourself who do not like them.

I like how masseffect made a quest where you went in with your whole team for just one mission. I doubt it well happen in fallot but still I hope they give the companions more of a backstory. Again like in mass effect

All-time favorite companion was Minsk and Boo from Baldur's Gate. Would die laughing if he was in Fallout 4 for some reason.

Which is pretty much the story of Oblivion, it seems to me. Martin was the hero who saved the day in that game. We were part sidekick, part errand boy/girl.

I see the points being raised above; as I said, I was just mulling it over. The reason it felt like my companion's story was taking precedence was that the mod-companion's story required me to go to an area of the game where the MAIN story had not yet led me... so I had to park the companion's story for a while. But that meant I could not talk to her at ALL (because the part where I was stopped was right before curing/healing her so she did not constantly pass out and only answer conversations with pained grunts).

In Star Wars: The Old Republic you're pretty much required (or at least expected) to use a Companion (just ONE). They have the same "problem" there in that if you have X companion with you, then perhaps you'll get dialog options, and if you have Y companion, then maybe nothing happens. Like one time this cowardly Mon Calamari scoundrel / con man (pretending to be a jedi) is with me when we head off to fight The World Razer and he makes the comment that "The wookiee would really like this fight, why don't you get him?".... Guss Tuno was a laugh riot and even if he WEREN'T a pragmatically useful companion, I'd be tempted to keep him around for his dialog.

By contrast, when meeting a female smuggler with my male smuggler, I brought along my fiance (Risha)... and she did NOT like my flirting (rolling her eyes and muttering, "You're incorrigible").... if Guss had been there, he likely would not have said a thing.

My only problem with repeated playthroughs is that a LOT of it will be, well, repeated. Same main story, same side-quests (except Companion-specific ones).... sure, the Companion may make idle comments or perhaps even enter conversations (not sure how that would work).... but the crux of it would be the same. And when that happens, I have to think to myself, okay, has ~this~ character of mine done this quest yet?

If the question you're asking is if NV companions became more important than the PC, I say no way. I loved the NV companions and their stories, and hope for something similar in F4, but their questlines and personalities were only a side dish. I don't think they were anywhere near the "star" of the show, but it was nice having a fully fleshed out personality to hang out with in the wasteland.

I'm a guy who usually goes it alone, but NV gave me motivation to use a companion for most of the game, which is a credit to Obsidian.

I think the companion storylines/questlines is somethingI really love about NV. Generally for other reasons Im a fan of FO3 over NV, bar the Companions variations and personalities (which exist to a point).

I would of loved for example the ability to upgrade Sgt RL-3 in FO3 (maybe with a quest to get code from the Robco factory)and I always found it a bit crazy that you couldnt recruit the Sgt unless you were at Neutral Karma. I had Science 100 and repair 100 and I cant work on RL3. That just smacks of a missed opportunity. I can overide a certain rogue Protecteron guarding some archaic American history, but I cant overide the Sgt?

Like many of the other posters, Ive never really viewed Companions as essential to the game. Ill take Fawkes every time because I just love the image of me walking around Megaton with a Super Mutant next to me and people just behaving normally (another thing that FO3 could have done better).

Im hopeful in FO4, that we have more dynamic small talk modes where who you have with you dictates how you are treated. We might get a racist like Tenpenny Tower place and if I have a Ghoul companion I want the resisdents views towards me to be less than nice (maybe I also run the risk of some of them ATTACKING my companion outright). Hopefully my speech, medicine and other checks are made with penalties due to the persons disgust of who I travel with. I just think there is a whole amount of variables that need to be taken into consideration.

There's two qualities I want in FO4 companions:

A.) Backstories, and good ones! Fallout 3 had them, but I particularly loved how NV expounded on them. For each companion, there was a quest you could do that would solve the conflict within themselves, at least to an extent. I want this back. You might say that this concept is similar to the "Companion loyalty quests" in the Mass Effect series.

B.) For them to not be idiotic and get in my way every time I try to walk out of a narrow door. (Looking at you, Lydia.)

Oh geez, that mutt Dogmeat was terrible about this! I go to sleep in my Megaton house and he will block the door to my room and sometimes it is really tough to get him out of the way!

I'm sworn to carry your burdens.

Well, kind of. But Martin was so much in the background for so much of the time, sitting safely behind stone walls while your character did all the adventuring, that he was more of a reason for your character to have an adventure than a character having his own adventure which you were participating in. He was a McGuffin, not a protagonist.

Much like Dad in FO3. He had his goals, but it was entirely up to the player character to achieve those goals for him. He wouldn't have gone to retrieve the GECK with your character along for support. He wasn't a mover of events.

I was thinking of (for example) the possible plot where the player is a hired wasteland mercenary, who starts the game picking up odd jobs (from his usual bartender contact) like simple caravan escort duties. Who is soon recruited by a naive, newly emerged vault-dweller to assist them in finding some piece of technical jiggery-pokery for some dumb reason. Accompanies the vault dweller to a few locations, then learns that the vault-dweller is trying to retrieve a control chip to repair a military computer on a long-lost Russian submarine, without which the computer will go insane and launch nuclear bombs at targets across the Eastern seaboard.

The vault dweller would remain the driving force, having skills the player character is forbidden (such as advanced hacking and technical skills) would advise on locations to go to and occasionally choose them outright, and would be required on most main-story quests - except for a few where they've gone missing, been kidnapped, got lost in a ruined vault etc. The player character could always go on non-story quests without the vault-dweller, with the excuse that they need to get more supplies or funding (a few high-cost plot-points could be built in to require this).

An advantage of a story like this is that the game could really go to town fleshing out the vault-dweller character, and working on player character interaction with them. And the player character would always have a good motive to pursue the main plot (money or survival) however 'evil' the player wanted to make that character.

The big disadvantages are that the player might feel dis-empowered, like a tag-along lackey rather than a tough, independent individual, and the player might find the vault-dweller character unbearably annoying.

I wonder if this sort of approach has worked successfully in games before?

WoW is this way were you end up playing second second fiddle to everyone from a literal elderdragongodes of life ( who incidentally saved you butt just because you happened to be in the area where she was also saving everyone else's butt) to more or les just following the originally planed to play stay at home baby maker while she escorts you all over the place so she can complane about having to bail her husband (who incidentally actualy is green ligtning Jesus Christ Superstar) out of the mess he got himself into....again....to basically holding the umbrella for the most powerful Mage on the planet.....who incidentally according to Lore was at the time the most angry to the point of genicide Mage on the planet....oh and you also get to play second fiddle to the craziest goblins and gnomes.....and in many cases third fiddle..... That is when your not the butt of the latest poop joke.

Charons my all time fave companion, that guy got the point and the point was to kill [censored].
Although I do like a nice backstory and companion banter like in the dragon age games, sometimes its nice to have the bulky silent muscle by your side.
So I would like a mixture of both types.

...this sounds like the World's Longest Escort Mission. That's a bad thing, as most escort missions end up svcking badly.

(Bioshock Infinite solved that issue to a degree by making Elizabeth immune to combat outside of cutscenes, and having her run into cover & hide as soon as fights started.)

Hmm, there also seems like there's a risk of that either making the game linear, or making the game very annoying ("Hey, we need to go get the chip." "Why are we going this way?" "What about that chip?" reminders every time you go to do a sidequest....)

I didn't feel like trying it out, but in Fallout New Vegas, Cass explicitly told me that if I took her with me to the Crimson Caravan Company that she would start firing on them, so I left her back at the Lucky 38 and went to the Crimson Caravan company with my other companion(s) to investigate them on Cass's behalf.

And I am pretty sure if you have Boone with you, it is impossible to peacefully negotiate with Legion NPCs ---- Boone will outright attack them.

Of course, in these cases, it's YOUR Companion who is acting, not the NPCs (until fired upon, anyway). I can walk a giant blue Nightkin through The Strip and no one will blink an eye. It looks like it wouldn't be hard to code in reactions, though ---- there are already some speech recognition "barks", like someone commenting that I was lucky to have a First Recon watching my back (Boone) when he was with me.

Of course, it WAS a First Recon sniper who ~said~ that to me, which felt like a kind of odd thing for her to say to me.