You may not like them, but they are perfectly reasonable.

Big MT could have easily grabbed me and Boone with that logic.

Surely I could convince happy caravans to bring my dog right? He doesn't need to sign a contract. He's a dog.

I gave perfectly reasonable reasons as to why the dlcs are solo and you're response is "nuh uh" and baseless conjecture.

I'm using examples from in-game. Again, you may not like the aliens only wanting you but what examples do you have besides them easily abducting more than one person, and how does that mean they always should?

And the Pitt being solo is 100% fine, and makes sense given the reason, you just don't like it but that's personal preference and has no place in an argument; you were sent to infiltrate a brutally oppressive regime, and bringing Fawkes along would render that impossible.

Those people have never seen super mutants but it makes much more sense to bring one along and expect no one to say a word? Are you serious?

Using a human companion? Well now you've got two slaves running around, and that's very suspicious. Not to mention the only way to advance is to fight in the Pitt and guess what, only one slave is allowed this honor.

Tell me again how the given reason makes less sense than this. (Hint: it doesn't)

Point lookout, again, makes perfect sense. People are quick to defend lonesome road because it was meant to be walked alone for plot reasons, but lookout was the same exact thing; forced to be solo for the plot.

If my dog was around he'd never let Toby near my head, and the brain surgery took place after the punga fruit. That was a solo hallucinogenic experience. Yea, it makes much more sense for you to be tripping balls and just have Jericho following you without saying a word. Yup, much more sense than having to be solo.

One gets a plot pass but the other doesn't? Stop cherry picking, it accomplishes nothing.

It does make some narrative sense for you to go alone.

FALLOUT 3 DLCs.

Point Lookout- As said before, the plot would've ended the moment you awoke to the sight of your companion murdering Tobar for daring to touch your head.

The Pitt- Hey look, Raider #2354, two slaves and a dog we've never seen before! This is obviously not a trap at all.

Anchorage- As said before, you're the one with the pipboy.

Zeta- Maybe your companion is smart enough to stay away from that freaky shiny thing; you were just too stupid?

FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS

Old World Blues- Again, your companion would've fought tooth and nail to protect you from getting your inner organs and spine ripped out. You would awaken to crashing and yelping as your companions turned the bots into a pile of wire and brain gel.

Honest Hearts- Yeah I don't get that either. We could've gone with our fellow companions as well. Kind of dumb. :/

Sierre Madre DLC- Ditto here.

Lonesome Road- Again, it's just you vs. Ulysses, not you, Cassidy, and ED-E vs. Ulysses. The road is for you to walk on. Alone.

I think a side point worth mentioning is: while there are very good reasons companions are left behind in some DLC, more work could have been done to insure they can follow you back in, once the DLC is complete (like BigMT, I have a mod that allows my companions to join me with the Transportalponder)...or when there was not a specific reason to exclude the companion. But more to the point, my main annoyance with the DLC is that once you're done, you have go hither, tither and yon to collect your companions again.

That, to me is the biggest annoyance. Allowing them to "set up camp" outside a DLC entrance, where they waited for you... would be great. Or, script them to join you in the DLC at an appropriate time. For instance: maybe leaving Veronica out of the Big MT is a good idea for the initial entry. Maybe she worked her way through the smashed train tunnel to find you. But, finding clues left by Christine and Elijah could have elicited some interesting depth to the story of Veronica. Dead Money is another one where she could have made her way in, and joined you later.

But my main hope is that, as I said: re gathering your companions is a hassle. I hope Bethesda fixes this, more than anything.

i wouldnt mind some compaion dlc. like they get a letter from someone our even if they added new compaions

it wasn't an issue in skyrim, so i don't see any engine reasons to not have companions enter dlc areas

but some dlc may require you to be alone for plot reasons (like if the could come with you in NV, it'd be fine in honest hearts, but they'd have to be left out for dead money even though it'd be possible for them to come mechanic-wise just because that dlc emphasized you being alone and unequipped a lot)

That's the kind of changes needed. It's a huge quality of life improvement, much like the dog not dying.

You're going to reload once he's dead anyway, much like you're going to immediately pick up your old companions anyway, why not just have them waiting to speed that up?

"Reasonable" is not "perfect."

You really should reexamine my arguments, because I explicitly mentioned only being able to bring another human companion, not Fawkes. My problem with The Pitt's justification is that the whole "Pretend to be a slave that just happened to be on the wrong side of the bridge right after someone escaped" thing seems nonsensical to me. Surely you could get more people in unnoticed by actually having them get captured by slavers taking slaves to the Pitt. The guy's plan immediately draws attention to you, which isn't something I'd be looking to do when trying to slip in a sleeper agent. I'll concede the actual battles in the Hole, though. Even then, surely from Wehner's perspective, having another body to fight in the slave uprising would be a good thing. The Pitt's reason might make sense given how the DLC starts, but I think it starts in a rather nonsensical way.

No narrative reason both you and your companion (except the robot, obviously) couldn't eat the fruit, and then the game would just separate you two from one another and have your companion be at the port or something like that. Still facilitates the twist without a flimsy justification of "This boat can only carry two people, including its crew." Piggy backing off of that, after we deal with Tobar, what reason does Point Lookout have for not facilitating companions coming with us?

The reason I give Lonesome Road a pass is that the DLC's story is built around it just being you and Ulysses. You come to an area, get called out by someone with a personal grudge against you, and accept his challenge. Point Lookout's story isn't. You get on a boat and wind up in a new place and then find out two people are in a feud of sorts. Being by yourself isn't a fundamental part of the narrative in the same manner. It only exists to facilitate a twist that could have been accomplished without it.

I gave a justification story and gameplay wise for Old World Blues: The scars on your brain are what kept you from becoming an ordinary Lobotomite. If you brought a regular companion with you, they would become useless and then people would complain. As for Honest Hearts, they could have said you're passing through terrain that would be too difficult to bring your dog. Or maybe they just don't want you to be weighing yourself down with food and water for your pet. Hell, the guy hiring you could just say he hates dogs and won't let you take Rex with you.

As for Mothership Zeta and my proof that they've taken more than one person at a time? http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Elliott_Tercorien http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Daniels http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Beckett. Some audio logs also suggest that several people were abducted at the same time, unless we're meant to believe that spouses were independently taken and experimented on. Not saying it should always happen that way either. Here's a way that would have fixed it: YOU mess with Theta's controls and activate something to teleport you into the ship. Your dog can't figure out how to replicate it, and the other companions have enough sense not to try. That would have made much more sense than the aliens ignoring whoever's with you.

I'm not saying the Rex thing is a perfect justification. I'm not even saying any of my justifications are perfect. Mind you, I'm not looking for perfect justifications. Just ones that make narrative sense and aren't being passed off as "perfect."

Good to know. I was pretty sure they were but I didn't want to make false claims. I've already told you that Mothership Zeta didn't exactly leave an impact on me. Thanks for telling me.

You have a very unique experience with the fruit. There's no guarantee that your companion would eat it, or that the natives would even trust you two to go together since they are trying to ambush you to steal some brain pieces.

If two people show up, why would they point them both in the direction when it is more than likely to back fire and have their operation blow up in their face.

The reasons as to why companions can't go are fool proof. There are many examples where a person with you would raise inconstancies, and frankly, you don't have to like it.

You're going off what ifs, and I'm giving you hard facts as to why it wouldn't work. You're using faith with nothing to back it up save the aliens can totally abduct more than one person.

Yea, that's established. But why would they want to? They clearly didn't want to as shown in their actions of only taking the courier, so now you have to prove why they think it's a good idea to pick me and Jericho up.

If you're going to rely on jumping through hoops to prove how it can totally work, it can't work at all because you're having to jump through hoops.

I would rebut this, but I honestly don't know what your points are addressing.

As for jumping through hoops, I'd say we're dancing on the same coin there. If I'm jumping through hoops by examining ways that could have facilitated or justified not bringing companions, you're doing the same by bending over backwards to proclaim the reasons we were given were "perfect" rather than just going "Because that's how the game was designed."

good to see everyone getting along

The reasoning made perfect sense in every dlc.

Toby doesn't want you with someone else because his whole gig relies on ambushing you when you're tripped out. Having a dog or super mutant nearby complicates this, so no companions.

The Pitt was brutally oppressive and you were sent to infiltrate. Having a dog or a buddy raises suspension, when your entire goal is to not raise awareness.

Really, there's no argument save you not liking it, and I could careless about your personal preference; it has no place in an argument using facts. Having a companion would upset the plot of every dlc, and would raise a ton of inconsistencies. That is a fact.

Not liking it is an opinion, and can be disregarded.

There is no jumping through hoops on my end because all of the examples are in game, I'm not making up nonsense like "you can your companion can both trip out on the fruit." What if he's a dog? Or a super mutant? Or a ghoul, who, iirc, have a greater resistance to drugs as shown by the ghoul in the under world?

The only one that raises an eyebrow even slightly is zeta, and it can be shot down with your companion simply not being interesting to the aliens. They wanted to experiment on you.

If that is unbelievable, then lonesome road is a mess because you're following the instructions to come alone, given by a man who wants to kill you. I'm not allowed to bring Rex to honest hearts despite him being a dog and not requiring any form of contract or agreement.

We don't need to justify why the DLCs in 3 and New Vegas didn't let us take our followers with us; they do that on their own just fine. I'm just hoping that, instead of a narrative where we get captured and our brains taken out or something, they write the DLCs so that they don't have to justify leaving our companions behind.

First of all, if we're sticking to the realm of facts only, then your entire argument falls apart because the idea of something making "perfect sense" is subjective and thus an opinion, not fact. Therefore, under your own post, it can be discarded.

As far as I'm concerned, this was never an argument about facts. How could it be? You opened up with claiming their reasons were "perfect," an inherently subjective description of them. This was an argument about whether or not the reasons they gave were good and whether they could have been better. I'm looking at the finished product, and, being unsatisfied with it, thinking of ways it could have been designed differently that I feel would have been better. Given that this is a discussion about whether or not the DLCs' justifications were narratively satisfying, opinion goes into it quite a bit.

You say you aren't "making up nonsense," and then immediately go on to make up "nonsense" to justify Zeta, as there's nothing in the game to indicate their motive for only taking you. I could say that they're really just kind of dumb, and it carries just as much direct evidence.

Personally, I don't see it as "nonsense." I see it as critically examining the narrative and either coming up with justifications for the story as it is or constructive criticism for how the story could have been improved.

As I said about Lonesome Road before, you're coming on Ulysses' terms, not your own. If you decide to bring Cass or Boone or whoever, he has the option of just not engaging you at all. I presented a few reasons that Rex could have been barred from going (provided they had actually been said in-game), but I'd think the bigger gap in logic is ED-E, as it wouldn't have trouble traversing the terrain and wouldn't need supplies. If I were writing, I'd solve that by just having the caravan leader say that they're dealing with tribals as well as New Canaanites, and he doesn't know how they'd react to something like a robot.

If you want to discuss facts, then the only thing to say is that the DLCs didn't allow you to take companions with you into them for various reasons.

There. No opinion, no subjective adjectives, no discussion if whether or not these reasons are narratively satisfying. Just cold, objective fact.

Not very interesting, is it?

I'm fine either way, provided that the narrative of the DLC actually facilitates your companions being left behind. I think New Vegas on the whole did a good job with that, though I do think Honest Hearts' justifications are much flimsier than the other DLCs.

I wouldn't say we aren't. Me and HighestPrimate disagree on a lot of things, but, on my part at least, there's no animosity in our arguments. It's just a difference in opinion.

Guys this has been an interesting read, however Im honestly more interested from my original point on making sure Followers can (within Story reason) follow us into future DLCS. I think FO3 in .. 2008? suited it's time period. They did want to establish separate 'stories' and themes in their DLCS. I get that . They wernt really expanding the main game.. they were giving us separate stories built on to the main game.

However its 2015 (and half way to 16). Im sure given the leaps in programming that we can get DLCS that not only add to the story but also give us new companions who can transition from the DLC where we find them back to the main game. Id like the lines between the DLC and the Core game to be so thin as to be the same game.

Im going to again reference Point Lookout here as I .. think its one of the most clear uses of not the Main game impacting on the DLC , but the DLC actually having reach beyond the confines of the DLC.

Specifically here Im talking the Blackwall/Marella questline where you need to find a book in the ruinous area below ground and either give it to Marella or the old man. If you follow Marella you find her dead, but get a message to go to Capital Wasteland , to Dunwych and find the Obelisk to destroy the book. I think (and I maybe wrong here) its the first time a DLC quest has led you from DLC to main game to complete the quest line (assuming of course you take Marella's side). I kinda liked that as a lot of DLCS for a lot of games in the past have felt very self contained. Ie the Desmond/ Calvert fight really never affects the Capital Wasteland.. its self contained to Point Lookout (in least in terms of the battle we see). Sure we learn that the Calverts were a VERY influential family, but its just lore .

How awesome would it be bringing say Desmond or....Trouble-man back into the main game.

I love the concept of DLCs and would just love to see a lot more quests go back and forth.. some you need (and Ill use my Cape Cod example again), to go to Cape Cod to do, and some start in Cape Cod and require you to get X back in the Commonwealth Wasteland. There just needs to be more interconnectivity.

This +1 also. Elliot your unfrozen Medic tells you several times that his whole squad was abducted. I believe you find 2 in frozen storage in the cryo labs as well as 4 opened up on the surgery tables. So thats 7 in total (and who knows how many more in storage). Sally, her sister and mother and father were found (Mother and Father being killed off already and his sister is unknown (although Sally does speculate she may already be dead or in storage.. and apparently there is a lot of the ship you didnt see on your runthrough of Zeta)

I'd like to see followers that tie in from the main game into the DLC stories subtly. As in, the story isn't about them or related to them at all, rather they interact and comment on certain elements or characters that do show up in the DLC. It involves your companions a lot more instead of them just being walking meat shields to help you get past all the scary monsters.

I want to dissuade you from making these kinds of arguments here. Because they get dangerously close to that tired old phrase programmers often hear: "X feature should be easy in this day and age" or "this should be easy, just you know..do it! Make it work like this!"...speaking as someone in Software Development...I can tell you that nothing will make a programmer seethe, declare a pox upon your house and children faster than this attitude. It's profoundly lacking in understanding when it comes to this business.

Gambryo, and by extension...Creation are not unlike specialized Operating Systems in their own right. They are incredibly complex. Yes, you're asking for what to you, might be a simple thing...but consider the following:

For every companion you take (and we don't even know what the companion cap will be, or how many will be available)...here is a taste of just some of the following that has to be figured out:

Dialog based on the presence (or non presence) of a comp. For each one. And combinations of different companions.

Changes to how the DLC is progressed through based on the presence (or non presence) of a companion. And combinations thereof.

Changes to the main world based on what happens in the DLC.

Changes to the companions, their behavior/speech in the main world based on the completed DLC...

...and further those changes depending on which ones you took and which ones you left behind.

Possible changes to NPC's, and their attitudes/speech to you based on DLC/outcomes/companions you took or left...

and so much more. This is just a rough sketch of all the things that have to be considered, the content that needs to be created. Writing, more voice acting, possible animation implications. You should also consider: what I outlined above does not even scratch the surface of what has to be done...it disturbs the air molecules 6 inches above the surface you want to scratch.

Im not saying these things are not possible. Just don't delude yourself: these types of things are not simple changes, no matter how much progress is made in technology. Any good programmer will tell you anything is possible, to a point. It's a matter of committing time, money and man hours to it. At some point, you can exhaust those however. You have to eventually ship.

These things ain't easy. Please don't assume they should be. Or can be. They arent, not in complex systems such as Creation Engine, or even the Source Engine...or any other engine. It can take a lot of work. The engine is only one part. The content is the other. When you get into content, and permutations of outcomes based on who's there, and who isint. It can get really sticky.

Just some food for thought.

Thanks, you are right I guess to me it does seem like a small thing and Im also in no way a Software Engineer or Games designer.

Even if there were just quests gained in the core game and built on in the DLC Id be happy with that. Esp if we got quests in the DLC that maybe directly impact in the core game.

I just dont want to see another Operation Anchorage (and more convulted variations on why a follower cant come).

Maybe the companion can actually say 'I hate Cape Cod. I was there once and nearly got my leg blown off. Im staying there so $%# off!'

No worries mate. It's perfectly okay to want these things, and a lot of the things mentioned in this thread are good things. My only argument was: never fall into the trap of thinking that designing this stuff is easy, or should just be "doable"...for down that way lay madness.

In Honest Hearts the caravan company only had enough space, food, and pay for one more member. That's why you had a weight limit of 75 unless you pass checks to get it up to 100.

I don't think that should be an exclusively follower thing. That should be a general world building thing, sometimes tied to followers (especially transient ones who traveled to the area from somewhere else). I like the fact that the Pitt is mentioned in a memo at Rockopolis, or that after hearing about him like he was some kind of Boogieman, we get to meet Joshua Graham, just like I liked meeting Veronica's mentor after hearing about him from her.

And while I like it when the story of the DLC does tie into the world we know from the base game, I'm also fine with going to places that don't really have much if any connection to what's going on there.

As long as it's fun and the story's good, I'm fine with pretty much whatever, though I do have a small checklist of things I'd like to see:

1) Quests that crisscross between the main game world and the world of the DLC (Like the on Tyranthraxus mentioned)

2) New quests added to the main game world completely independent of anything else from the DLC (think the Aetherium Forge in Skyrim)

3) The ability to bring followers from one area to another, providing it makes narrative sense.

4) Further world building beyond what we're seeing in this DLC (Example: Say we're in Philadelphia in a DLC, and a character mentions coming from Canada by crossing Lake Erie. Even if we never actually go to Lake Eerie [my Post-War name to reflect it being spooky and scary), it'd be interesting to hear a little something about it).

Yeah, definitely. Anything that enriches the experience is a plus in my book. As shallow as Skyrim's followers were (most, at least), I did like the fact that they reacted (in a limited manner) to their surroundings. "Oh look a cave," etc. It was nice at first, but like most things it got repetitive after the second play through. It was certainly nice to experience it the first time though, and I feel that that experience trumps all that come after it.

I think it'd be neat if there was some AI detection improvements, so they didn't just say it when you were right next to it (or every time you were next to it, but could mention it from further away like saying "Look, a lake" while standing over one on a mountain pass). It'd also be nice if there was more than one comment they for each type of location. Using the cave as an example:

"Look, we found a cave."

"Do you think we should check out this cave?"

"Maybe we should stay out of this one..."

"What do you think's in here? Yao Guai or Deathclaws?"

"You want to go into that cave? Do you remember what happened last time?"

"I'm starting to think you want to live underground."

Come up with a dozen different lines or so per follower and make it so that they don't say the same thing too often, and I think it'd be pretty nice.

I'd never take them with me...I never even bring a great weapon with me either... I usually bring a throwaway pistol, and an extremely low level armor... Maybe 10 stims, and a purified water.....Once I get into the dlc, and get a new set of armor and a weapon... I drop the pistol and crud armor. I like to maximize how much stuff I can carry in the dlc... including the always sweet dlc weapons... Companions also get in the way more often than not, so I usually don't even use them... I might make an exception with dogmeat in Fallout 4, only because he can tear peoples throats out, and I like the way you can command him.

Im wondering if Dogmeat can come with you IN the DLCS for FO4. I know he cant die, but Ive got a sneaking suspicion that he might get left behind at your settlement.