Now that i'm just about 200 hours into Fallout 4, I put this together to share some of my experiences with the game.

http://i.imgur.com/n76Z7St.jpg

Or, more specifically, some of my experiences with the game's companions. The companions in Fallout 4 are extremely interesting and varied, and offer some unique insights into the world that can only really be appreciated through their interactions with the environment as the player romps around the game world having adventures.

I've done my best to clean out spoilers so you can read safely, but please be gentle, i'm still pretty new to posting here!

There is lots to see and do, and even more to see and do when you consider that each companion will react to events and the environment a little differently, encouraging you to pick another companion the next time around and see how they feel about the events unfurling in the world.

There is so much wonderful companion content in the game, that after all of this time playing with several of the companions my appetite for companion-driven content is greater than I expected going into the game. While what we already have is great, there are also some things that I would love to see added or tweaked in the form of patches, updates, and DLC that would guarantee Fallout 4 as a game I will be playing for years.

One of those things is outfits.

Early on in the game I found myself constantly switching the clothes on my character to suit the circumstance.

http://i.imgur.com/tRoWZRu.jpg?1

As with any RPG, wearing the right clothes for the situation not only gives you handy stat bonuses or protection, but it can also help you get into character and experience the world as someone who lives there would. As this tendency naturally evolved, it led me to prepare multiple outfits; not just for my character, but for my companion as well.

Hanging out at HQ? Better wear our faction clothes! Striking off into the wastes? Put on a gas mask and some rugged gear. Night on the town? Put on your pre-war best and kill 'em with style!

Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg. As a player and as a character I need a weapon for each situation as well, and so does my companion! A silenced weapon for confined areas (gunshots inside are LOUD), a melee weapon for stealth kills, a long range weapon for the wastes, and a high-tech heavy weapon for rolling in power armor are also a must. Last but not least, it's important to bring the right throwables for the situation too. Tossing artillery smoke in a city center will cause too much collateral damage, and throwing a molotov in a confined space could set *everyone* on fire.

Therein lies the problem: with so many different sets of clothes, equipment, and weapons i'm spending all my time in menus.

http://i.imgur.com/QNvZprO.jpg

What do we need to help us get out of the menu and back into the game? Configurable companion loadouts! By letting us use a dialogue tree (or preset character preferences) to set our companion's loadout for specific and predictable circumstances we can cut the amount of time in menus in half and make companion management so much easier.

This could let us assign our companion a stealth weapon, so they don't blow our cover, and the proper clothes so they don't cause a major inter-faction incident.

This way, my companion could be set up in her Brotherhood of Steel pilot's suit, climb into her Paladin Power Armor...

... and climb out ready for a nice evening with some classy friends of ours!

http://i.imgur.com/JTsw9jK.jpg

This would go a long way toward making our adventures with our companions in Fallout 4 a richer and more enjoyable experience, but it doesn't have to stop there. Because the companions are clearly able to tell when certain circumstances have changed (entering or exiting some kinds of areas or specific locales, combat, stealth, and others), it's a natural next step to dig in to their AI and really beef up their interactions with the player and the environment to help realize them as the full and interesting characters they were written to be.

While New Vegas (a different developer, but still an excellent Fallout game) gave us the ability to have some tactical dialogue with our companions (stay close, stay back, fight ranged, fight melee), Fallout 4 doesn't currently give us the wide range of options that we could have to help us cooperate with our companions more effectively.

The companions are quick to point out that some of the (quite valuable!) things we are picking up are merely "useless" junk, but should you ask them to loot a distant enemy or container you will find they have collected an inventory full of pipe pistols and tin (steel!) cans, dead weight for any but the greenest adventurer in Fallout 4. Being able to select what things they should collect, or have the companion AI base the decision on value to weight ratios would work wonders for making a companion a more useful addition to a player's journey all around.

Just allowing our companion to mirror our equipment or state changes (Sneak/Walk/Run/Headlamp) would work wonders for enhancing those characters' responsiveness to changing game conditions. If I get out of my power armor, shouldn't my companion do so as well? If i'm using a stealth weapon, shouldn't they keep our cover?

If i'm say,

, shouldn't they refrain from murdering the entire bar?

http://i.imgur.com/FcQTgiA.jpg

Not to say a little murder every now and then isn't alright, everyone whips out a fat man and takes out a raider camp every once and a while, but I wish she wouldn't complain about how she'd rather have a civilized discussion while dumping magazine after magazine into confused bar patrons as I stare on in shocked horror at what is happening around me.

If the AI controlling the companions is tied more closely to player behaviors it will help them react appropriately to a scenario, such as using fists instead of lethal automatic weaponry, or making comments about the circumstances or the environment at the right time.

One of the great moments I love in this game is when I go to an interesting place and my companions says, "Look at this, isn't it great!" and then shows me something I didn't know they could do, or tells me something about the game world that I hadn't heard before. Unfortunately, from time-to-time, they will get caught on map geometry or be just out of earshot when they do it, and i'll miss out on that little tidbit that makes all of the exploring and investigating so much fun in the first place.

If our companions could wait until the gunfire has died down, or other characters have finished talking, or we're close enough to hear their comments before engaging these sequences it would mean more time spent enjoying all the cool little moments and less time reloading saves to try to trigger the interactions again when we can actually hear them.

Another issue here is when our companions are choosing to fight. Should they start shooting when we get shot at? When we're spotted? When the player starts shooting? Never? Companions seem to play it fast and loose with fringe combat situations, leading us to get tied up in fights that we're better off avoiding, or triggering story events that we aren't ready for yet. This can be contextualized a bit (as I suspect it is now to some extent), but allowing some of this to be selected through dialogue would take the guess work out of it and put the ball back into the player's court for them to decide when they want their companion to go in guns blazing or shy away from combat instead.

A large element of this, I suspect, is also connected to pathing issues. The kind of issues that land us in scenarios like this:

I still can't get this tapdancing Brahmin out off of my queen-sized bed. I've tried everything.

http://i.imgur.com/Cqxeuvw.jpg

I even made it its own queen-sized bed, but it wants to dance in mine. Obviously AI is hard, and creating a game where the topology of the environment can be changed by the player and involves three-dimensional spaces is even harder, but this is one of the reasons I think Bethesda (and not modders) are the best candidates to give us solutions to these kinds of issues.

While pathfinding may never be 100%, systems to detect a stuck character and *carefully* unstick them could reduce the impact this has on gameplay a whole bunch. One of the causes of (and solutions to!) stuck character issues is the teleport system. When a companion gets stuck on something or can't find a way around an obstacle usually the best way to unstick them is to move far enough away from them that they will teleport to catch up.

This is a more effective solution than turning off clipping in the console because it moves the companion from where they are (stuck) to where you are (not stuck), but there are some problems with it that can make matters worse under some conditions. As an example, if you fall off of a catwalk in power armor and land somewhere un-walkable, your companion may teleport on top of you. Now not only is your companion stuck, but you are stuck as well!

If you are sneaking into a bandit camp to disable their security before striking and your companion gets snagged there's a chance they will teleport to you, but off a ledge or out of cover, resulting in their (and ultimately your) detection. In other scenarios I will set my companion up on one side of the camp in "wait" mode and sneak to the other, hoping that when I tell them to "follow" they will hit the camp from the other side, so that we can flank the enemy.

But if the companion is too far away from me when I select "follow"? They are teleported directly to my position, rendering the setup I just prepared useless. These issues are troublesome, but by allowing us some configuration options for companion teleports they could be all but eliminated.

If the bed-stealing tap dancing brahmin is one side of the AI spectrum though, there are plenty of moments on the other side that are gems.

When stopping in for supplies at the boat house, my companion faithfully guards the door so I don't get caught unawares.

http://i.imgur.com/ydykANd.jpg

The way each companion picks idle behaviors, interacts with the environment, or makes comments based on the circumstances is so cool it keeps me booting up the game to play whenever I have a spare minute. When we go to a bar for business i'm thrilled when they sit down and have a drink, and when we go to the marketplace I love to hear them have conversations with merchants in their stalls. Still, many of these reactions quickly become samey and uniform, even from one companion to the next. These encounters are a brilliant opportunity to show the unique personalities of each of the companions and expand on their characters. Does this companion like noodles? How do they feel about reconstructive surgery? Is shopping for knick-knacks boring them or are they interested in the myriad of things on offer?

Many of these exceptional opportunities for exposition could emerge during combat. Is there an enemy that a companion fears or finds fascinating? When injured do they panic, or bravely fight on? Will they care for the player if they are crippled or leave you to fend for yourself while they try to finish the fight? Bethesda has done a great job to give us a lot of this in Fallout 4, but it has only increased my desire for even more of these personalized character-specific interactions.

In combat I would be impressed if one companion fled from the fires of a flamer in terror, or charged forward to finish off a wounded ghoul before it could heal from the radiation. These kinds of behaviors, tailored to fit the individual character, are another chance for Bethesda to do what it is best at: telling awesome stories. While each companion has their default clothes and weapon, this only gives us a little sliver of insight into their individual preferences. The gear or items that a companion prefers could be the perfect vehicle to show us elements of the character we haven't seen yet. Do they want to fight with a Machete or a Plasma Pistol? I want them to tell me when they find something they like or something they don't.

And when they like something, sometimes I want them to tell me why. The companion like/dislike system is a huge improvement over the karma systems of past games. If killing a drug addict is "good" but stealing an empty glass bottle is "bad", it becomes difficult to really dig into the actual moral conflicts and cause and effect relationships we have to navigate in the game. Using the subjective preferences of our companions to add another external factor in our decision making process feels natural and is a great choice both for the game and for the story, but sometimes it is still too unclear what exactly our companions like/dislike and why.

Does my companion want me to give an addict his fix (thus enabling their addiction), or deny it to them (prolonging their suffering), and do they even see this choice from the same perspective I do? What if they see this problem from yet another viewpoint that I can't anticipate or intuit from their actions or words? In many cases the companions will ask you questions or tell you things that make their thoughts and feelings clear, and those moments are a huge part of what has made this game so much fun to play. Adding more of the same would round out the individual identities of each companion and make spending time with all of them more engaging and rewarding.

Of course, adding even more personality to these interesting characters requires more dialogue, and keeping it to the quality standards already set means working with the talented actors and actresses who originally brought these characters to life. Studio time costs money, and spending money to create content without a likely return on the investment is a bad bet. This is why I believe additional companion content is a great pick for a Fallout 4 DLC. Adding a few more personal quests for each companion would be an opportunity to pick up all kinds of great narrative threads and see them through, bring an eclectic mix of new content to the Fallout 4 experience, and allow for the potential revenues to make the effort worthwhile.

I've grown quite attached to some of my Fallout 4 companions, and now that they've spent so much time adventuring with me i'd love to get in some hours adventuring with them. Also they need to say my name. All of them. Really.

Thanks for reading, and keep up the good work for you guys at Bethesda!