I miss the freaks

[Lord_Mord]

I'm the type of player that always chooses companions by their freak factor. I dont do that on purpose, I just like those guys. My favourites where Xzar, Jan, Xan, Tiax, ... I think you get the point. PS:T had, at least in my opinion excellent companions. Durance and Grieving mother brought a little bit of that freak factor to PoE1, but not nearly enough, if you ask me. Devil of Caroc was also OK, but way too polished (mehehe, polished...).

 

Now I see the images of the new companions and read the bits of information given so far and I'm starting to fear, that we will only see those Eder/Pallegina-like normal nice guy types. The watercolor image from Update 13 has that fanfictionesque drinking-tea-with-the-gang vibe to it, that sends shivers down my spine. Not the good kind of shivers.

 

Am I the only one here?

Edited February 15, 2017 by Lord_Mord

[Messier-31]

Isn't Aloth/Iselmyr combo a bit of a freak?

 

Anyway, good call.

 

We're all doomed.

[Zitchiock]

Life is so hollow.

[Lord_Mord]

He's OK. I like Aloth, but he's a little bit ... light. The whole Iselmyr thing is cool at the beginning, but once it's revealed it turns into a big "haha, Aloth has an Iselmyr"-joke. For me Aloth is nothing more than an interesting but normal character. Eder is also OK, because he's so ****ing normal, that it's interesting again. But it would be more interesting if he was the only one. What else have we got?

 

Pallegina? A walking cliche, that tries not to be one.

Hiravias? Soooooo funny. End of story.

The Eskimo-Dwarf? Filler content.

Zahua? Could have turned out very good, but didn't, due to a lack of will to do something real strange with him.

The frog man? I always forget his name. I actually like him. But don't ask me why.

DoC? Nice try. Sort of funny, but not edgy enough.
GM? Not my taste, but now we are talking.

Durance? Some people actually hate him. They dont hate him as a part of a video game that they rather would not have to be included. They hate him as a person. THAT is exactly the stuff, that I'm talking about.

 

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against those kind of characters. I understand that is what most people expect. But for me they are just fillers. Maybe what I want are also cheap cliches. I dont know. But at least not the same kind of cliches over and over.

[Lord_Mord]

 

Life is so hollow.

 

It is.

[Mikeymoonshine]

Durance and Grieving Mother were certainly the companions I found the most interesting, they had a lot of personality. I guess I can see the worry of it being the close knit team of heroes and if you don't fit into that category then you aren't gonna have as much fun with the companions. I don't know if that will be the case tho, non of the Companions in Pillars one were really portrayed as overly good or bad people. 

 

Would be nice to have at least one off the wall character like Durance tho, who I just found completely hilarious. Maybe that Orlan companion, isn't he like a pirate or something? 

[Merany]

Serafen could fit I guess but yeah, agree with you. Those companions are the best, need more of them 

[Osvir]

I'd love a twisted and dark character, someone like Falanroed (the dragon slayer). Someone who, at times, wrestles the dragon inside and calls out a desperate "Kill me!" before being shut down by a whispering Master Below... "Hush now little one".

[teenparty]

I agree. Torment probably has some twisted and strange companions. I have not played the beta. Don't tell me!

 

Bah! No fun!

[SkySlam]

Well, I like the "fanfictionesque" image of the party, but I agree that Durance was a character with a strong personality. I despised him, but I agree that someone like him is needed in the game.

 

Onward, to futility!

[Blarghagh]

Hm. One the one hand, I agree, I thought Pillars could have used a few more freaks. On the other hand, the characters from BG1 you mentioned are one note comic relief?

[Leeuwenhart]

One note?

 

I never let go of Xan the Depressed Male Model Jedi.

 

He was hilarious...

 

 

"Run while were still able!"

Edited February 15, 2017 by Leeuwenhart

[Leeuwenhart]

"Pffft... this group is especially hopeless today"

XD

[Leeuwenhart]

Would be crazy if you played with xan and you had near party wipe but he killed Sarevok.

[rjshae]

I'm just the opposite and prefer seemingly normal characters. Perhaps they are seen as more entertaining, but to me crazy characters are too unpredictable in life and death situations. My guess is that most players probably just need some distinctiveness and humor.

[tid242]

I tend to agree that pathological NPCs with issues that are not well adjusted tend to be the more interesting..

 

With WM they did add some characters along these lines but... and this is the problem with, like, every video game ... by the time you get to WM these recruits kind of fill in the edges of the core 'watcher + Eder + Durance + Aloth + Pal" party.  I feel like Eder and Durance are pretty normal.  Aloth has issues, but doesn't embrace them and tries to be normal instead, and I like Pallegina because she quitely has issues with power and authority, but isn't weird about it..

 

Hopefully there is a greater selection of early NPCs to build out the party with some of the more colorful ones from the get-go.  Or when/if there is an expansion it inserts the new char offerings further up into the very early game..

[Karkarov]

You know your thread is in vain!

In all seriousness though Durance sucked.  I didn't hate him as a character, he is just annoying, adds nothing to the game really, and his only reason for going with you was to torment you.  What kind of person actually wants that as a traveling companion?  He is just a loud mouth annoying asshat, and in fact, reminds me of some people I am forced to work with.  Which doesn't say a lot about some of my co workers, or Durance.

I am fine with wierd or zany, Xan really is my favorite BG1 companion.  Annoying douchebaggery though?  I can do without.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Durance also had terrible stats and the replcement mercenary I created made the PotD playthrough much easier, but that was true of all companions.

 

Anyways yeah give us some weirdos, but besides Jan most of those BG characters listed are 1 note wonders that don't give much more than a NPC with a voiceset. Torment was also a much weirder setting and I don't see ancient alien battlemages or aetheist succubi who aren't evil or a floating skull that wants to bang zombies fitting in.

[Tigranes]

POE consciously went for a set of more rounded characters, especially because they were written to explore one of the game's main themes - how do people of all walks of life, people with families and homes and pasts and other ordinary aspects, deal with crises of faith coming in different forms? 

 

I liked that, even though I also like a lot of the crazy freaks from other RPGs. It never hurts to have a game that does it a bit different. 

[Ninjamestari]

I think it's good to have both 'normal' characters and freaks. The normal dull characters are there so that you can better appreciate the interesting freaks. What I'd like to see is some freakish wizard chick. You know, Safiya meets Vette kinda freak with a couple weird obsessions to add for spice.

[rjshae]

With WM they did add some characters along these lines but... and this is the problem with, like, every video game ... by the time you get to WM these recruits kind of fill in the edges of the core 'watcher + Eder + Durance + Aloth + Pal" party.  I feel like Eder and Durance are pretty normal.  Aloth has issues, but doesn't embrace them and tries to be normal instead, and I like Pallegina because she quitely has issues with power and authority, but isn't weird about it..

 

Those WM additions make it reasonably interesting to do a replay with almost an entirely new party.

[Pel]

I too wish we had some especially freaky/dark companions to choose from and that, in general, we got A LOT more of a selection of recruitable NPCs to potentially take into our party, even if they were relatively taciturn or reticent compared to the "main" recruitable NPCs. I can't stress this enough, but with the current system, with Pillars 1's system, and with Tyranny's system, the world ends up feeling much, much more dead and immersion breaking without enough recruitable companions or random adventurers who want to join up with this incredibly badass, powerful adventurer who(whom?) just rolled through their modest village or camp or city or wherever.

[injurai]

POE consciously went for a set of more rounded characters, especially because they were written to explore one of the game's main themes - how do people of all walks of life, people with families and homes and pasts and other ordinary aspects, deal with crises of faith coming in different forms? 

 

I liked that, even though I also like a lot of the crazy freaks from other RPGs. It never hurts to have a game that does it a bit different. 

 

​Which I really appreciated. Pillars is it's own thing, it doesn't need to have every traditional aspect of DnD or the IF games.

​

​I much prefer having companions that you can throw your effort behind and help. The way that common people might have done back in the day. People have their past, their quirks, their reasons. But I don't want someone to be so outlandishly unapproachable that it inhibits other aspects of a coherent and cohesive narrative.

​

​I think Durance is a good example of a sort of befuddling element in one's party. But I wouldn't want him to be too much more of a freak. It would just becomes untenable and keeping him in the party will start to become immersion breaking. Especially with the improvements that they have lined up for relationship tracking, I want more nuanced disagreement/agreement between companions. I don't want to just have some "freak" that feels totally unjustified that is ignored by the characters. Where the only loyalty is towards the player character. That aspect of having a party of dialectically opposite alignments to me is a thing of the past. It's one of the features of DnD that I'm happy hasn't carried over into PoE. Alignments arbitrarily cast characters as one thing. They were Saintly and brash. Sinister and reserved. That's who they were. It's not enough, and that sort of characterization shouldn't be done through alignments. Because of the nature of alignments it tempted the game designers to make these characters that were just outlandish freaks. I guess that still works for a game like Tyranny. But not for PoE.

[Koth]

I can't believe no one has even mentioned Minsc in this discussion, or his miniature giant space hampster. I like wacky and zany, but my problem here is if we're talking about cliche's is that all the "freak" characters you seem to mention are evil or P.I.T.A. to have in the party as they conflict with other members / your own moral decisions. Be a freak sure, but freak doesn't always have to mean evil.

[Heijoushin]

He's OK. I like Aloth, but he's a little bit ... light. The whole Iselmyr thing is cool at the beginning, but once it's revealed it turns into a big "haha, Aloth has an Iselmyr"-joke. For me Aloth is nothing more than an interesting but normal character. Eder is also OK, because he's so ****ing normal, that it's interesting again. But it would be more interesting if he was the only one. What else have we got?

 

Pallegina? A walking cliche, that tries not to be one.

Hiravias? Soooooo funny. End of story.

The Eskimo-Dwarf? Filler content.

Zahua? Could have turned out very good, but didn't, due to a lack of will to do something real strange with him.

The frog man? I always forget his name. I actually like him. But don't ask me why.

DoC? Nice try. Sort of funny, but not edgy enough.

GM? Not my taste, but now we are talking.

Durance? Some people actually hate him. They dont hate him as a part of a video game that they rather would not have to be included. They hate him as a person. THAT is exactly the stuff, that I'm talking about.

 

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against those kind of characters. I understand that is what most people expect. But for me they are just fillers. Maybe what I want are also cheap cliches. I dont know. But at least not the same kind of cliches over and over.

 

*shrugs* Your complaints about every single character suggest that you're just too picky.

I personally really liked Devil of Caroc. Her voice was sexy and she was a good "group freak".

 

No, actually I do sympathize a little. I think I'd prefer a wider roster of characters (say, 20 shallower companions instead of 8 deep ones) which would allow for a much wider variety of types. But this is not the way things are going.