Hey, everyone. I'd like to start a discussion on the follower inventory management UI, or lack thereof. I've done a basic search of the forums but haven't found a similar topic.

Generally I think the game is quite perfectly done aside from a few minor quibbles, but the follower inventory feels like I'm playing Fallout again. Don't get me wrong, Fallout is, as they say, the shizzito, but I hope we can agree that the RPG genre has made great strides in UI design since the 1990s. I don't mind not being in absolute control over my followers' costumes, but some transparency in terms of stats and gear choices would be appreciated.

Suggested fixes:

A. Tweak the follower AI so they can choose gear based on armor rating/damage instead of material.

I've seen Lydia take a glass dagger out over the legendary quality skyforge steel sword that does three times the damage. Also refusing to use a legendary steel shield over her default and presumably standard steel shield, or a legendary quality hunting bow that does more damage than say an imperial bow or standard glass/elven/orcish/etc. bows. Does her standard gear level up with her? How would we know? Again, transparency would be nice.

B. Perhaps add an option to manually equip the gear the character wears when trading with them. Add another button to the bottom line that says something like "equip follower."

I'm no coder but it seems to me the simpler fix than having to rewrite AI. Needless to say it ought to override the companion's urge to equip trash because it looks shiny.


Thanks for reading, and any constructive discussion is appreciated.

Amen to this. Your B suggestion is perfect, being able to specify what they use vs what they carry.

I like this option, simple, easy to implement. Makes sense.

Thanks for the replies. Keep em coming, folks. I agree that B would probably be easier to work in, but you'd still have to either disable the follower's gear selection AI or work in an exception for the player's choices.

And boy do threads get buried quickly on this board.

If you want to suggest things, how about adding in a functionality that lets you change the follower's combat script, so that we can tell characters to stop charging headlong into melee when they are archers with powerful bows and high-quality arrows?

I know it's way beyond the sort of functionality Bethesda is going to give to companions, but there are also a lot of old mods for Oblivion that handled companions far better than this, including having the ability to point to a place and tell the companions to just stand there. They included scripts that made companions not attack enemies while you were stealthed, so that stealth characters could still use companions. There were scripts to let players "teach" spells to their companions, so that you could control what forms of magic they used.

Since this is basically the same game engine, there shouldn't be too much trouble with Bethesda just downloading some of the mods to its previous game, and just plain copying them.

i was thinking the same thing. like i would like my companion to look similar to me, but i wear light armor and if i hand him steel plate armor he'll wear that instead...
maybe i should just let him carry weapons and dragon stuff so he'll look like me, not a knight lol

All it really needs is a simple mod like companion Vilja for Oblivion. The creator gave her a couple of bags in her inventory that were like chests when you click on them where you could stash loot so loot never ever got mixed up with her personal inventory, and also you simply change her default armor to be accessible by the player and character management will be 10x easier. So even if you gave her high end armor as long as you put it in her bags she would never equip it.

Follower options in general feel like a huge step back compared to the rest of the genre. As I mentioned in the original post, it felt like I was playing a game from the Fallout era again, with very limited follower interaction. It baffles me why they'd do this, to be honest. Even Fallout 2 had deeper follower options than does Skyrim. I hope they address this in a patch or expansion, as I feel it's one of the few black marks on an otherwise flawless game.



Great idea. Could have a "bag" that would be the only place the companion can draw gear from, and placing equipment into it would ensure they would wear it.

Actually, I remember a couple more - not only did some companion mods let you have stealthy types of characters that you could point out a location for them to stand, so as to set up an ambush from stealth, but there were also commands to tell them to open locks for you, as well. Hence, you could be a non-thief character that could hire a thief to open some locked doors you couldn't get through, or some chests you couldn't open.