I don't blame BGS for doing this.

I mean, I keep on accidentally killing followers in Skyrim because they charge right ahead of me suddenly and I have to reload. Until the AI is improved, I'll keep using the essential tag.

I like the immortal approach for companions. In Fallout 3 I never had a follower apart from Fawkes, who was essential if i recall correctly. The reason I like it is simple, I played Fallout in 2005 for the last time I believe and got Dogmeat up to the cathedral where he died to a one-shot from a nightkin with a flamethrower. And it was hard to keep him alive that long, as was with other followers, Ian in particular died all the time. They were just useless after a certain maount of time. And it really killed me, it did.

In Fallout 2 it was better, but still stupid, the amount of control you have over the followers was just not enough to have them able to die.

But in Fallout 3 it was the worst. The amount of control was even reduced and it was in real-time and not in turns, so you would have to constantly think about your followers. And no the AI is really bad in this game, they engage at ridiculous ranges, run after an enemy and attract even more, there is no way to pause the game and give orders and so forth.

I agree that companions have issues in NV as well, mainly that they are too strong, but it is still better than before. And yes it adds to many RPGs if companions can die, but only if you have full control over them, yet Fallout is not Baldur's Gate or Pillars of Eternity, where it really is my fault when my companions die. We are playing a story-centric action game with RPG elements.

In terms of killable NPCs, I do not see why so many have to be killable, I like the freedom the Fallout and TES ganes have, but some NPC jsut should not be killable.

As far as role-playing is concerned, the are simple work-arounds. Firstly if you need your companion to repeatedly kill enemies while you cower behind a rock, you are not really role-playing at all. Secondly the approach that once your mate goes down and you kill the enemy to rush and help him should be sufficient for many people. In the end we do not yet know the exact system yet, though the NV approach seems more likely. BUt maybe your companion does not regenerate health, but needs resting and/or stimpaks. This would be sensible.

And as Howard said, and this is the only proof, we have and it is congruent with my experience, Dogmeat dying is a reload situation for most people, one could say that this is the right approach that most players do support. For everything else there are mods.

"What is the big deal about the companions being immortal!?"

To me not very, its nice from a sadistic POV to be able to kill them off but I can just dismiss them if I want. In some ways the idea of sending companions to 'wait' at a home for weeks, months and years at a time with no acknowledgement from me to them of their existance is funnier. They probably go mad, or something.

Whats big deal? Well if something dog,NPC or other character is invinciblle that ruins immerzion in the game. Like why most of people play RPG games? they want to go in that world and live in it as it is real ,that way you get the best expirience.Now, if you put invincible NPC or companion you break that feeling! For others that like to just shoot and not be one with the world thats not big deal...

It's not a big deal.

If you're on pc you can console away the essential flag whenever you want to.

No complaining, you have the tools at your disposal to make things how you like with minimal effort.

This is equivalent to complaining that the remote is on the other side of the room. Put it in perspective people, people die every day from starving to death while civil war ravages their homes and families and you find the time to complain that your video game is breaking your immersion. First world problems.

Type in a few lines of setEssential and get over yourself.

If you feel that strongly about it you have the tools.

Mods will also be coming to consoles, and I doubt a mod as simple as this would be troublesome to implement on consoles.

If I want a particular character to be essential or not I just simply find their baseID and run the console command.

I don't whine that Bethesda did it wrong, I get it done.

Hey,

I like a Companion who brings a story with it or something, you know someone who talks about the landscape or enemies, or dogmeat travelling alongside you, would svck if they could die IMO, but then if i want everything killable the modding community will pro[ably come to my rescue.

Greets, RO

Companions being essential by default does remove the ability for the player to choose and that's never the best option (IMO). Now it being the default but then being a player option that can set via a conversation with the Companion (not very realistic to be honest) is a viable alternative. Mods do it all the time, why not Vanilla?

Just an aside, this issue only truly effects console players as PC players have workaround options (console, mods, etc.) to "fix" the issue as desired. Does not really effect me one way or another (tho I can see a console player being upset about NOT having simple options).

Once again I never said all 20 million people who purchased The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim commented saying that they want all NPC's killable or whatever, but I don't believe people who want all NPC's killable are in the minority I believe we're even.

I agree that they should be immortal while following you, NPC baby sitting is awful in RPGS....or any genre for that matter.

But there should be a temporary penalty put on them when they go unconscious, so you still have to be somewhat mindful, but just not annoyingly so.

Why is babysitting a NPC('s) awful? I actually like to make sure my companions or important quest NPC's don't die I make sure they go the right way or try to kill all of the enemy NPC's before they kill my companions or important quest NPC's.

Companions aren't immortal? Once they go down they stay down and need a stimpak.

I guess some may look at it as a sign of casualizing the game more. Doesn't matter to me either way.

They don't die even if they stay knocked down.

Piper complaining about the protagonist:

"Gawd. Nora has VATS and she just reloads when she dies. Why does she bother having Hitpoints at all? Ontop of that, she can use mods! Don't even get me started on her uncanny ability of "precognition". When I asked her how she did it, she said something about "googling it" and "Checked it up on a Wiki." Say what!?

I mean, if Nora knows about my newspaper before we even met, why did she ask?"

Looks like its going to be done a bit better than the immortal companions in New Vegas this time, with a stimpak needing to revive and thus actually costing resources.

It'll also work better than Fallout 3 where they got around companion characters AI almost never being good in any videogame by giving everyone a giant bucket of HP in Broken Steel. You can just use them to tank.

Looks good all around.

I don't like non-essential companions. When they die, a piece of the created world dies with them. If they add a toggle for those who feel their mastvrbatory immersion hinges on watching a companion die, then so be it.

When the day comes that NPCs can react fluidly and protect themselves in dangerous situations (i.e. not running into a mob of enemies with a power fist - looking at you Veronica), then I'll be more open-minded to non-essential companions. We're not there yet.