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I don't have favorite companions as I like to create characters myself usually.
But from them I really like my gothic bros. They do almost nothing, have almost no characters, but somehow you real get to like them, because everyone else treats you like shit in these games.
I am always smiling when I see them again somewhere.
Somehow characters in other games don't entertain me that much.
From the classic characters I like Durance, almost all PS:T characters and that talking Deathclaw on F2.
Of course the animation is so annoying but it found it funny after a while. The rest of the them can die, but not this ass hole.
Also the evil ranger guy in NWN2 OC always amused me. (Bishop?). He's just there does nothing and is just evil without any cause.
Gesendet von meinem Huawei Honor 5x Tapatalk benutzend.
He's a no-nonsense dwarf with a penchant for violence. He won't hesitate to verbally shit all over other companions for being pansy-asses. I like how he begrudgingly respects the PC based on your dialogue choices with him. He is not a stereotypical beer-swilling dwarf (Although he does love his ale). He's one of the few 'evil' companion NPCs in Baldur's Gate 2.
He is also one of the best companions in the game for his dual-wielding DPS. Give him a warhammer and axe and watch him let loose!
Great topic, I like party-based games and I think companions can greatly enhance games provided designers don't go overboard with romances and DEEP psychology (Bioware...). In no particular order :
- Sulik from Fallout 2 : I too have a soft spot for this guy. The first time I played Fallout 2, my English wasn't top-notch and I didn't really understand what he was saying most of the time, which in fact added to the whole bizarre / tribal vibe he provided.
- Minsc from Baldur's Gate / Bladur's Gate II : most people hate him these days but you gotta admit he was a fun and weird NPC the first time you played BG. To me, he is to BG what Sulik was to FO2. I don't take him anymore on BG playthroughs though.
- Korgan from Baldur's Gate II : same reason than Sulik, I was impressed by his cursing and swearing the first time I hired him on my first BG2 playthough - that and his extraordinary prowess as a tank. I also liked when Aerie left the party because of him.
- Spooky from Commandos / Commandos 2 : definitely my favorite character in Commandos games. His disguise ability was so powerful as to be unbalanced at times.
- Lupin from Commandos 2 : the only really new character introduced in Commandos 2, I thought he was awesome (frail but so quick and nimble, able to reach any point).
All characters from Desperados were awesome but I liked most :
- John Cooper
- Sam
- Sanchez
Then a lot of mercs from JA2 (including most of those MERC guys, I just love them) :
- Sidney : classy and efficient, the perfect British merc.
- Hitman : one of the initial mercs I picked when I played the game for the first time, will always have a soft spot in my heart.
- Reaper, simply because he is so deadly
- Wolf, gotta love the wolf for his cool
- Razor and Haywire, one of the best pyscho duos ever made
- Biff and Flo, a true team of hilarious pussies
- Gasket and Gumpy, losers extraordinaire, and yet so useful
- Numb : for some reasons I like him even though he's not a very popular merc among JA2 players
Baldurs Gate 1: Without mods companions in BG1 are jut a bunch of one-liners. But the most entertaining personalities were Tiax, Xzar, Montaron, Eldoth, Xan, Shar Teel, Edwin. It seems like majority of companions there had some sort of mental illness tho. BG1 was crazy alright.
Baldurs Gate 2: Viconia , Annoyman (because i just love his hypocrite and boastful dialogue and offten use the chance to fuck up his knighthood quest just to kill him after), Edwin and Korgan are the laughing stocks and i love them for that. Keldorn isn't bad either.
BG2 EE: I only like Rasaad because his quest is entertaining, the rest are trash. I mean childish mage, gay orc, lesbian vampire... give me a break. On my current play i just disabled them all with mod.
Arcanum: Doggy is my fav. Then Virgil as the most developed companion in game, good voice acting too. Geoffrey has the most entertaining personality and voice acting, too bad he's not that developed. Then go Magnus, Raven and Torian.
KOTOR 2: Kreia, Handmaiden, Atton, Visas.
New Vegas: Boone probably.. I hate bringing companions along in this game anyway.
Fallout 2: Sulik is my favorite. Then Vic, Myron, Cassidy, Goris.
Ass Effect series. Tali's ass was the best companion. Gimme dat booty.
Dragonfall: Glory, Dante and Dietrich.
Dead State: Technically characters in DS are companions and you can bring them along to numerous supply raids, they are however only talk at the base. Lloyd, Regina, Cliff aka pussy destroyer, Fiona, Grant, Vic and Doug were the most fun.
Dragon Age: Origins... eh. Morrigan and Alistair maybe. Ogren was fun. And Doggy.
Faggot Age 2: All are equally loathsome except Varric.
Tranny Age: Transition: I hated them all. Bunch of weirdos. Fuck this game to hell.
Skyrim: Surprisingly i liked Serana... And she was voiced by that chick from Bloodrayne games.
PoE: I hate the game, but Durrance is pretty cool.
Grandpa and Sulik. They do sell all right on the slave market, that's a +.
Gorn, Diego and the weed smoker. Those 3 share a common situation with your character: everything is going from shit to worse and they are in the middle of it. It just make you feel for them. Diego is cunning and manage to get on top of most situations, Gorn just resolve his stuff with the big axe, and the other idiot is completely lost in its weed and try to fight it on top of everything going dramatically bad, not counting the fact that a fucking demon toyed with his mind.
Magnus. The very big issue of me having this guy in my party is that I always go for magic. And I never managed to finish the game with him. I loved the fact that he is quite independant and accompagny you because it better suits his goal but that you can loose it at any moment if he dislikes something. But then, further in the game, you understand that he is actually quite lost and quite alone, and that he ultimately depends on you. At this point he is pissed if you get him off your party. He feels like a living soul in a video game.
Maybe Boone from NV. I like his character developpement.
Not a big fan of Kotor but I liked the jedi girl that you first meet, her capture and her changing with the part you have in it.
I always forget about JA2 - nothing particularly profound in terms of dialogue, but the way they managed to make every merc feel distinct regardless, was very impressive.
I also like how Sir-Tech gave each 2d portrait basic facial animations. More devs need to do this.
I usually prefer to make my own party members when the game lets me, especially in games like BG where most of the companions are annoying. My all time favourite is Kaelyn the Dove though, I was genuinely upset when I got the bad ending for her the first time around.
The Mass Effect games weren't great but I did play them all and I always found myself very drawn to Liara T'Soni. Also Cass from New Vegas, Durance from PoE, Jan from BG2 and Wolgraff from D:OS
Albion:Sira and Melthas. It was the first game that I've played which had NPC party and companion interactions. Sira was an Iskai mage, Melthas - the mute druid. Both were useful in combat, and had nice litle romance going on between themselves (four years before BG2 came out). Fallout 1 & 2: Dogmeat. Best companion. Marcus and Sulik were also both alright mates. BG 2: Viconia, Keldorn. Both were stereotypes, but at least they weren't grating. Planescape: Torment: I liked all of PST's companions, but my favourite were Annah, Morte and Dak'kon. Annah was really great and particular, I tend to play rogues and so I tend not to use NPC ones much, but she has so much character, really nice way of talking (at least for my inexperienced Russian eyes her argot was very interesting) and good reactions and backstory. Morte was both comic and tragic character, he added much needed levity to otherwise serious game. Dak'kon had really great personal quest, restoring his faith and learning and teaching the lessons of Zerthimon was immensely satisfying. NWN1: Was there companions in it? Can't recall. Seriously though, OC henchmen were awful. Arcanum: Um. Well, I didn't really liked anyone there. I guess Virgil was alright, and that city dwarf also. KOTOR 1: I hated, hated all characters there, so nope. NWN 2: Erm. Didn't like anyone there either. KOTOR 2:Kreia and Atton. Both were great, Kreia with her teaching and subversion of traditional SW mentor role, and Atton was realy well-rounded character, interesting backstory, not very whiny, quite humorous at times, but still not just a stock smuugler. Also his death dialogue was very touching. Mass Effect series: say what you want about that popamole fest, but it had entertaining, albeit cliche'd, companions. Garrus and Wrex were bros. DA:O: Alistair was alright, Morrigan was a bitch, but an entertaining one. Fallout: NV:Boone. Also ED-E. Boone was great mechanically, he also had a decent backstory and dialogue. ED-E I just liked for that jingle which it played at the start of each battle, also it wasn't annoying. DA2: All companions were awful. DA:I: Still hadn't played it and don't really plan to. Shadowrun: Dragonfall: I liked all companions, especially Eiger and Dietrich. Eiger was ex-military which actually looked and talked like one, and also was quite great in gameplay terms. Dietcrich had an interesting backstory, and I'm also particular to older companions. Shadowrun: Hong Kong: Racter. Great dialogues, great character, I just wish they would've fleshed him out more. Still - really liked him. Pillars of Eternity: Durance and Grieving Mother. For obvious reasons. Eder was also alright, but in comparison to this to he loses hands down. Still, a nice low-key ol' farm boy. All others ranged from forgettable to shitty.
Lt. Malavai Quinn and Khem Val from SWTOR
Racter and Isobel from Shadowrun:HK
Durance from PoE
Virgil from Arcanum
Iolo (maybe my all-time fave) from Ultima, though I loved the whole posse - Dupre, Geoffrey, Jaana, Shamino - did I miss anyone ?
All of the Torment NPCs (except Vhalior, in that he's just as awesome in concept but arrives too late and gets underdeveloped compared to the rest), but especially Dakkon and Morte. Morte's lies (and that he has an understandable reason for lying to you) were predictable, but realising that they were there so that
you get completely fucking blindsided by the revelation that Dakkon has also been lying to you by omission, because neither of them wants to go back to the death-trap in the Negative plane
was awesome, as was Dakkon's whole character concept. So many moments of awe, from discoverying the real nature of his slavery to you, to the circles of zerthimon, to realising just how much shit that TNO has put Morte through over the years to the point where it's no longer explainable as just Morte making a binding promise as he clearly has the wit to have wormed his way out of that (much of it lampshaded by the comments that Morte shakes off as 'funny jokes' in the early game - while still reacting in a slightly different way to the usual back-and-forth banter between him and TNO), to the way that Morte just once shows the pain hidden beneath his comic mask when Ravel manages to get under his skin - just brilliant all round.
Kreia. For many of the same reasons that she appears on 'best villain' lists. Computer games have this weird thing where a villain waits at the end and does fuck all, aside maybe from a couple of cinematic events that the player doesn't interact with. Yet even a good movie doesn't work that way - the antagonist is someone intricately connected to the protagonist, who interacts with the protagonis throughout, often spends much of the movie as their friend/ally. Think of the relationship between Christian Bale's and Hugh Jackson's characters in The Prestige. You can't get that without the characters interacting throughout. It's amazing, because even when it's been done to a mild degree - Shodan in the SS games, the 7 fights you have with Irenicus+Bodhi (combining them) over the course of BG2, Andrew Ryan in Bioshock, Walter Simons and Gunther Hermann in Deus Ex 1 - it's been universally recognised as a clearly better style of antagonist. So why is this still the exception instead of the norm?
Edwin (and Edwina), the BG2 version. Yeah, he's a mary-sue 'Gargamel' bad guy, where the developers were so fond of their pratfall jokes that they made him objectively more powerful than any other pure mage can be, including the player, without balancing him with a mutually exclusive powerful NPC option because they want to make sure you took him with you - then again, they do make you complete a fairly lengthy questline before accessing him, so I guess they realised there needed to be some 'earning' of such a powerful companion. Those bonus spells made him an auto-pick in any BG2 run prior to having played the game so many times that I was mixing up the team for its own sake. Plus whilst the jokes are indeed lowest common denominator, I won't pretend that I didn't piss myself laughing the first time I did his quest and he got turned into Edwina, what with the 'Oh, what are these? They aren't too bad, not bad at all....hang on...what happened to my....no....NO....NOOOOOOOO!!!!' dialogue. The reason I'm going with the BG2 version specificially is that the voice actor knew what kind of job he was getting into that time around, and just goes with big-time - it's pure Gargamel from the Smurfs christmas special, over-the-top comic evil that face-palms as he accidentally keeps on doing good deeds.
One-of-Many. Gann. The flamingly gay Bear, that strangely enough is about the only straight-manly-man NPC in the party despite being an embodiment of pure gayness (Ziets seemed to be channelling Tim Cain when when writing that one).
Ammon Jerro in NWN2 main campaign, for transcending the dull source material and being a better NPC than the game deserved, almost breaking the game's moral compass as a result.
Lexicanum in WL2. Came too late to be really useful unless you metagamed and planned in advance to lack some key skills until halfway through the game when you pick him up. But he has a lot more personality to him than most NPCs in the game, and whilst I loved the game, the only part where I felt 'moved' in any emotional sense was when Lexicanum, after fighting his involuntarily imposed android 'upgrade' so hard, gets absorbed into the "we are Conchise' hivemind in the end-battle (weirdly, the voice-acting of the villain in that moment - "I will rebuild this wasteland. I have so many plans....I have so many plans....I have...I have....I....We....WE ARE CONCHISE" was the 2nd most effective moment, purely due to the voice-actor doing an awesome job - in that one well-delivered line he actually highlights the absence of a great antagonist by, just for a moment, giving the antagnost layers and depths missing from the way he's presented the rest of the game). Yes, Rose suffers the same fate, and she's way more useful than Lex (Lex is technically better stats/skills-wise, but Rose comes early enough to be useful without metagaming), but getting taken over due to a voluntary hand replacement just doesn't have the story structure of Lex's fate.
Not sure if you can really include them, because they're all equal protagonists, not recruitable side-characters, but everyone in Betrayal at Krondor.
FO:NV - Boone. Fit the tone perfectly.
FO2 - Cassidy. Plus Myron, baby, Myron!
Alpha Protocol: Steven Heck. Especially when, after assuming that he's going to be one of those 'token crazy but doesn't actually do anything to be a liability' NPCs he shoots up the hotel lobby when ordered to create a subtle distraction
JA2 - Calvin Barkmore, clearly. I'm sure that if the player had refused the contract altogether, Barkmore would still have saved the country by becoming a titan of industry through Grimoire sales.
PoE: Durance and Grieving Mother. Same reason as Ammon Jerro - they transcend the surrounding source material to the point of almost breaking it.
Edwin - The most powerful character in a game where the PC is becoming a god. Also moderately funny, has good voice work, and has a consistent personality. The only character I always take in both BG/BG2.
Garrus - Space bros forever!
Cassidy, HK47, Durance & Grieving Mother are some other good ones.
, Annoyman (because i just love his hypocrite and boastful dialogue and offten use the chance to fuck up his knighthood quest just to kill him after), Edwin and Korgan are the laughing stocks and i love them for that. Keldorn isn't bad either.
