About the Companions: Encouraging Some Variety

[Kage Tempest]

Hello Forumites and Members of the Obsidian Order. Given what has been revealed about the world thus far and the overall theme of the playable races revealed, it is to my understanding that we will be given a pallete of tolkien-esque playable races that may or may not be flavored in ways to make them interesting and not generic.

 

Obviously if all the playable races were something odd like bug men, alien like slugs with psedopods for vocal speech with multiple eyes, ghosts and ghouls, or anthropomorphic/magical Animals like Gnolls, Dires Tigers, and Werebears [oh my!], then the more hard core RPG players from the 70s to early 90s will most likely drop the project altogether. Not to mention it would make it exceedingly difficult to make a compelling story centered around your actions as said creature in a different type of game world. So with these little tidbits of exposition in mind after that huge run on sentence that would make most editors consider the euthanization of such a person as I, consider the companions.

 

Several Companions have been revealed to us already, all of them human or human looking, though the guy that looks like a mage may not be human [he kinda reminds me of the scholarly Illum from D&D]. Other than the basic and predictable backstories following human mercenaries looking for work with a troubled love life, or perhaps the scholar with his own agenda after professing interest of some sort of otherworldly quality of yourself, what sort of stories and interesting perspectives may be expressed by these companions? The Baldur's Gate Series, the Neverwinter Nights Series, Even Dragon Age have all, very successfully I might add, made me care deeply for the campions I chose to travel around with. But even then, I began to grow bored of the fact that they come from the expected and tried and true backgrounds [other than Minsc].

 

This Brings me to my actual point of this poorly worded Dissertation, Companions.

 

Dragon Age Origins: Pebble[That Pessimistic Golem Statue thing with the lisp and odd sense of Humor]

NeverWinter Nights 2: Neeshka[Had to Mod her to give her the Tiefling Tail]

Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer: That Ghost Wraith Thing of Evil Doomy Doomyness

Neverwinter Nights 2: Storms of Zehir: The Lizard Man that Guides you to his Chief

Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark: Mother Fracking[the kind where you use high presure of water to break of rock for oil] DEEKIN [The Kobold Bard of awesomesauce that may or may not multiclass into Dragon Disciple and become a winged Kobold of fire breathing goodness]

Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker: The Solar outsider, The WereRat

 

What do all of these companions have in common? They are all Non Human and Come from very different baackgrounds. Why do they matter? They bring very interesting, if sometimes humorous, perspective on things in general. They allow you to view their race or their circumstance with a perspective that is otherwise unavailable when fighting their patron races be they lizard men, golems, undead, kobolds, were creatures, and planar outsiders.

 

I feel Project Eternity can greatly benefit, story telling wise, with a companion that is not any of the playable races and is out of the Tolkien "norm." I am currently not quite sure how it would fit with Project Eternity Lore, or how awesome the team behind making the companions actually are in creating interesting and memorable characters. Creating Companions based off of class or racial stereotypes can indeed railroad the character of that Companion into a specific path, but I for one believe that creating exotic and very different companions can add more to the game than it would detract.

 

I am not sure how my thoughts will be viewed/praised/flamed, but please talk away, I am happy to discuss things as long as things stay civil.

 

P.S. I am not crazy nor on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Just trying to express myself after being subjected to days of boredom and instant insanity puzzles [Look up Instant insanity puzzles and realize my dilemma]

 

P.P.S. Thank you for reading, I hope you had fun.

[nikolokolus]

Chris Avellone, who was the lead on Torment is writing the companions ... in pther words, rest easy ... also, you might want to post more often so you don't end up spilling out a bunch of pent up ideas all at once.

 

[Kage Tempest]

You speak the truth about the latter section of your response. But being someone that has never played Planescape Torment I am ignorant of what bounties it may offer in terms of interesting companions, would you care to enlighten this scatterbrained fool?

[Shades]

You forgot Okku! The rainbow bear in MotB!

 

I'm happy to see any type of companion, as long as they're well written with interesting stories/personalities. And considering the people who will be creating these companions as nikolokolus mentioned, I don't think we have anything to worry about.

 

You speak the truth about the latter section of your response. But being someone that has never played Planescape Torment I am ignorant of what bounties it may offer in terms of interesting companions, would you care to enlighten this scatterbrained fool?

 

In Planescape: Torment you have a floating (talking) skull, a suit of armour, a burning man (literally), and a... How to describe him... Kinda like an old CRT monitor with wings and multiple limbs, among others (I'd say those four would be the most unusual in terms of being non-humanish).

Edited October 13, 2012 by Shades

[Kage Tempest]

Oh. Mah. Loarrrrrrrrrd! How could I Forget Okku!!!!!!

 

But seriously, a flying CRT Monitor with limbs? Sweet. What did they do?

[Shades]

Oh. Mah. Loarrrrrrrrrd! How could I Forget Okku!!!!!!

 

But seriously, a flying CRT Monitor with limbs? Sweet. What did they do?

 

Yup! The limbs? He could dual-wield crossbows. Here he is:

[Ieo]

You speak the truth about the latter section of your response. But being someone that has never played Planescape Torment I am ignorant of what bounties it may offer in terms of interesting companions, would you care to enlighten this scatterbrained fool?

 

Get PS:T from GOG.com (DRM-free, and mind the mods link) GO FORTH AND DETERMINE YOUR DESTINY, BERK.

[rjshae]

I don't care if they are a little eclectic, but I definitely prefer companions that I'd like IRL.

[Kage Tempest]

Heh, I think most people do. In my case as is the case of many others, I like to escape from my reality and subject my mind to endless possibilities.

[Ieo]

I don't care if they are a little eclectic, but I definitely prefer companions that I'd like IRL.

 

I would've hated Edwin IRL, but dang, he was funny as all hell in-game... and it helped to have certain others in the party too.

[Kilroy_Was_Here]

Also, for really weird races; get thee to The Ur-Quan Masters (the enhanced free fan remake of Star Control 2). More of an action/adventure than an rpg but...

 

There's a race that does nothing but troll people, a race that wears masks for every occasion (well, they used to...), the race with speech patterns so weird even your onboard AI can't translate them properly, the robots that try to genocide everything because their diplomatic code has a bug on one line.

 

*deep breath*

 

The typical 'grey' aliens, the hot amazon aliens, the lawful/neutral evil conquering/exterminating aliens, the scottish cat aliens, the hippy stork aliens, the slaver aliens that look like blobs of dough, the aliens that are afraid of EVERYTHING and several more I can't think of.

 

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

 

Check it out sometime. Even the voice acting is gold.

[Hormalakh]

The Fallout 1/2 games (never played 3 or NV) also had interesting companions. Fallout 1 had dogmeat. Fallout 2 had Marcus, Myron, Goris, Skynet, and Lenny.

 

Dogs. Big and little mutants. Deathclaws. A drug-creating chemist. That's some ingenuity right there.

[nikolokolus]

Also, for really weird races; get thee to The Ur-Quan Masters (the enhanced free fan remake of Star Control 2). More of an action/adventure than an rpg but...

 

There's a race that does nothing but troll people, a race that wears masks for every occasion (well, they used to...), the race with speech patterns so weird even your onboard AI can't translate them properly, the robots that try to genocide everything because their diplomatic code has a bug on one line.

 

*deep breath*

 

The typical 'grey' aliens, the hot amazon aliens, the lawful/neutral evil conquering/exterminating aliens, the scottish cat aliens, the hippy stork aliens, the slaver aliens that look like blobs of dough, the aliens that are afraid of EVERYTHING and several more I can't think of.

 

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

 

Check it out sometime. Even the voice acting is gold.

 

Oh man, StarCon 2. Best. Game. Ever. I played that thing to death in high-school. The Drudge ships and the Orz space marines ... so many good memories.

[nikolokolus]

New Vegas companions were really good. Boone, Arcade, Raul, Lilly, even ED-E with his little blips, boops and beeps.

[Shades]

the scottish cat aliens

 

Do you mean the Shofixti? I thought the Yehat were the scottish ones.

 

And yeah, Star Control 2 is full of all sorts of awesome races and the music that they have for each race is great too.

[Xaositect]

I <3 this thread. Torment, Star Control 2 (ur quan masters) and Fallout 2 being my favorite three games of all time.

 

I had the same thought/concern as the OP when I read the lore update though. Stock fantasy setting stuff, mostly. Which is fine if it's a mechanism to save the writers exposition that they can spend elsewhere, but they'd have to do so. Simply making more D&D lore is a losing game, since D&D itself is alive and well with its own massive fanbase. There has to be an extension that's unique.

 

Fortunately, since they made Torment, (which was undoubtedly one of the most atypical D&D games of all time - it didn't even have swords or armor!) I'm still feeling pretty good about it.

[Krios]

I like my companions to have some sense of humanity; I think that helps me relate to them. If all my companions are rainbow colored aliens, I probably will pass them by due to a preconceived impression they will not be able to understand me, and they will likely speak in blips and whistles or other alien language, that I will have no hope of understanding them in turn. Though I am confident the devs will try to make the selection of companions as broadly appealing as possible. If all fails, I still can fall back on the Adventurer's Hall.

[Rink]

Sure not every partymember should be an alien. But I think companions should be memorable. I forgot most of the adventurers I traveled with through the years, but some I didn't forget because they were excentric, funny, interesting, had some weird lovable features or took me to adventures that really showed me parts of them or their past that I wouldn't have expected and were interesting. I also really miss signs of that kind of feature in the concept arts I have seen. Especially since we had an update were this was explained how important that is (although I would have loved it to be a better example than some umbrella and stuff like that.). Only the monk seems to be interesting if you look at him the other ones look like guys I would forget instantly.

I know it will probably be better in the real game, when they had time to work it out, but I just wanted to point that out as well.