Jacob. I categorized him as "Feasible in battle, kind of a dorkus outside of combat". Hated his design. Looked like a football player.

The biggest issue with companions is FO3 was the discrepancy in vulnerability.

• Dogmeat - dies regularly
• Fawkes - pretty much invulnerable (sit back and watch the killing)

In FO4 I'm looking forward to the followers being much more suited to coming along rather than a liability.

Them not dying this time around should help with that.

Probably one of the worst characters of the whole trilogy. I actually liked Freddie Prinze Jr. guy more than him (or more appropriately, disliked him less than him). That's just how bad Jacob was in Mass Effect.

Probably the most forgettable character in the entire trilogy.

Fallout 3 companions were actually decent in terms of being unique characters. They needed quests to fill in the gaps and flesh them out, though, as well as more dialogue. Would have loved to see Charon and Jericho have quests especially.

New Vegas companions obviously take the cake for being unique characters with introductory quests and companion quests. Lots of dialogue you can have with them, and the quests add more for the player as well. Definitely the right way to do companions.

Fallout 4 is promising, in my opinion. Preston Garvey and Piper seem to have recruitment quests and unique personalities, though it isn't known how interactive they will be after recruitment. Ideally at least one meaty quest per companion, unique dialogue throughout the wastes, and decent conversations options to get to know them. At the very least, they seem like a step up from Skyrim.

This!

I'm hopeful that after the Skyrim feedback, how popular the various companion mods like the FONV Willow companion mod are, and how popular the more detailed companions in FONV are, the F4 companions will be at least as detailed as FONV if not more so.

Bethesda said they were trying to pull in the most popular mods for F3, FONV, and Skyrim.

Willow - A Better Companion Experience by llamaRCA has over 30K endorsemants and over half a million unique downloads.

Vilja in Skyrim by Emma Amgepo Lycanthrops has over 30K endorsemants and over 800 thousand unique downloads.

Add in all the human F4 companions are romance-able, and that likely doubles the quests directly related to the companions.

Hopefully we will get some good dialog about current events from our companions too.

My Fallout 4 dream feature would be to be able to have two human companions accompany you and have them banter and argue like they do in the Bioware games.

Likely not going to get that, but if Bethesda ups their narrative game like they say they want to, then I have high hopes for Elder Scrolls 6 or Fallout 5.

The other thing is that with Special stats taking front and center we are going to have a real reason to bring companions along that cover areas our Sole Survivor has still not mastered.

I'll admit to usually having one favorite companion for each play through and would appreciate having good reasons to try different companions.

Hopefully Bethesda has set it up so we have good reasons to try out the different companions available depending on the mission.

There will be quests where we might need a fast talker like Piper.

There will other quests were we need muscle, or a demo expert, or a hacker, or a safe cracker.

Ten human companions is a good number to provide the needed mix while having certain companions being members of the various factions.

I'm hoping they each have an extended side quest available.

Each play though you would only have two or three close companions that you would need to do most of their quest lines.

I'm also hoping the many of the companions reactions will be tied to your faction reputation.

Not all companions should be tied to a faction, but some companions should be part of a faction.

It would be great if how they treated you was dependent on how you have been treating their faction.

I think in the last third of the game, there should be some clearly defined line in the sand that if you back an opposing faction, your companion will break with you.

It wouldn't be too bad if depending on your actions one or two companions would be locked out each play through.

I'm picky about companions. For a good while it may just be me and Dogmeat. A man and his dog. Taking on the world.

A companion has to fit my character, mesh well, got similar goals, or you know, situations happen.

My only requests for followers is that they have

1) some sort of backstory and quest like FNV

2) ability to control them without using the stupid dialogue box, FNV companion wheel was pretty good and JIPs Command and Control mod was even better

3)the number of followers is determined by charisma

4)one of them is a mole rat named Snuffles with an old mini-nuke strapped to its back that you cant disarm and if it gets hit will explode.

1, 3, and 4 can be added through mods. However, I suspect that all humanoid Fallout 4 companions will have their own quest not sure about Codsworth and the Dog, but they could have their own quests. 3 will likely have perks that affect the number of companions since they need at least 10 Charisma perks.

For numero 2, JIPs C and C is actually a mod for FNV. Best companion control system I have used to date.

You can't really add quests to vanilla followers without it sticking out like a sore thumb because you will have very limited dialogue to work with so you either end up reading silent dialogue which sticks out or you have a voice actor who will most likely not even sound close to the original voice actor. Better to have it in by default. In fact its easier to add new quests to followers with sidequests because you have more dialogue to splice together.

Didn't see the point of including 2 since it already mentioned mods. For 1, I was going with companion mods where it is a completely new companion instead of the vanilla followers.

ME had 6 followers

ME 2 had about 12 but only if you got all the DLC

ME 3 had 17... but only if you had all the DLC, and played through 1 & 2 correctly

DA 1 - 3? 9 companions without DLC

So how can you be disappointed in the number of followers? (12 so far as we know?)

To me quality is > quantity, I rather have followers that actually have interesting personalities and a backstory that you unravel as you play the game along with good banter as you play (and not something that repeats all the time).

However I have to say, I am VERY disappointed that they are restricting it to a SINGLE follower at a time.

Especially if dogmeat is included in that.

I mean 2-3 people is a good number, it also allows for the characters to bounce around each other like in the Mass Effect/Dragon Age, how the characters make banter with each other and certain characters talk to others, it helps give them character and also provides fomr of the best dialogue and things to talk about.

Limiting it to one follower means you will get NONE of that kind of banter between cahracters but only with you.

I always thought he looked like Kanye West with Edward James Olmos' complexion.

OMG are we talking about Mass Effect? I love Mass Effect!!!

While Mass Effect employed more of a squad method as opposed to Skyrim/Fallout’s companion method, the character development would have me view them as companions. If the companions in Fallout 4 are half as fleshed-out as the ones in Mass Effect, they will be a yet another quality addition. And that’s not to say the ones in Fallout 3 or New Vegas weren’t, it’s just that new Fallout is new.

For Skyrim I think the followers were perfect for that game. Those that could travel with me did a fair enough job of helping, plus they could carry stuff, I could equip them, etc.

As far as romance goes it was perfect. I had a very large variety to pick from. Had to do next to nothing to get them interested. Could get hitched regardless of six. Take them home and have some lover's comfort. For Skyrim ... it was perfect, cause if they only had four or five well written ones to choose from I know I would have wanted someone else, and I would have had to modded it in anyway.

See I never expected nor wanted a Bioware romance in Skyrim. Not that I don't like those, I just didn't expect it and would rather have had the large selection and little effort. To me Skyrim was never meant to be a romance novel.

For FO4 I can assume of the 12 companions at least 8 will be romanceable. That's a small enough number that I they could put more effort into them. Course I already know that one of the first mods I'll hunt for is the 'Pretty Piper' mod among others. And of course there will be those NPC's I wish I could romance that are not available and I may be wishing for Skyrim's system again. Unless Bethesda can actually make the romances interesting ... but I have so little faith in that.

In DA & MA, the followers are better written and fleshed out than in the Fallout/Skyrim series IMO so there not being that many didn't bother me because there were many I really liked. With Skyrim there were many followers, and sure there were many bland ones but there were also a lot more followers I liked (Farkas, Serena, Aela, Mjoll, J'zargo, and that's just 5 of them) idk I was just hoping they'd increase the amount of Fallout followers a little bit for more variety since it makes sense that Fallout 4 will be much bigger than previous Fallout games. Who knows maybe I'll be happy with just the 12 in Fallout 4 once I find them and recruit them all.

I hate to say it, but after traveling around Skyrim with amazing fan created followers like Inigo, even New Vegas quality followers will feel hollow and I don't expect the Fallout 4 followers to be as fleshed out as the New Vegas ones. I do certainly hope I'm wrong about that. This is not an indictment of vanilla followers ... modded followers like Inigo with their complicated situational awareness scripts and thousands of lines of dialogue would require far too much time and effort to create. Still, the follower I'm most likely to have at my side in the Boston Wasteland is the dog ... because all she has to be is a dog.

You may be right, but Bethesda did say they spent a lot of time looking at the most popular and fun mods and deciding if they should put them in to F4.

Willow for FONV has 30K endorsemants and half a million unique downloads.

Many of the other companion mods for F3, FONV, and Skyrim have just as much popularity.

Not to mention the many companion utility mods like JIP Companions Command and Control.

Plus there is the popularity of the companions in the Bioware games.

With the voiced protagonist and the focus on a better narrative, I would expect them to make the F4 companions at least as fleshed out as the FONV ones.

Both Piper and Preston Garvey look pretty interesting and I bet they have some companion quests.

Plus they made all the human companions romanceable which makes them at least as fleshed out as FONV.

Now I'm assuming they learned their lesson from the Skyrim romance scene and each F4 companion will have a couple of romance quests to complete before true love can flourish.

I bet they could have a lot of fun with a let's meet my parents scene.