NPC companions: how to do them right?

[Amaril]

I'm sure any of us can name several CRPGs with NPC companions fighting alongside the main character. Every game that has them will give the player a different level of control over what they do in a fight. There are the games where you fully control every party member at once (Baldur's Gate, Final Fantasy VII and X), games where you can give your companions a few set commands but not control them completely (Mass Effect, Final Fantasy XV, Persona 3), and games where your companions do their own thing entirely with no input from you (NieR, Skyrim the vast majority of the time).

My question to everyone is, which way do you prefer for different kinds of games? Or, maybe more usefully, is there any level of group control you think is always too much, or too little? Personally, my experience is that making companions more independent only improves the game if it cuts down their reliance on your help by the same amount. Skyrim is a good example of this done wrong, I think--your companions act completely on their own, but might need you to heal them in the middle of a fight, which is annoying when you can't easily get them to stand still or come over to you. For action-focused games, I usually find doing this well makes things a lot smoother, but at times it can also make your companions feel sort of pointless, since even if they actually are contributing to a fight, you don't notice because they're doing it automatically, with no input from you. What do you all think?

[factotum]

Have NPC companions who do their own thing, but have them be intelligent about it. See: any Dragon Age game, where even in Inquisition (which was about as dumbed down as it can get) you could specify some quite useful behaviour for your companions (e.g. "Drink a healing potion when you drop below half health"). You don't need to have the brain-dead NPC companions you see in Bethesda RPGs.

[Drasius]

If they have sufficiently good AI, then they can do their own thing and not be super frustrating, but the more difficult the game gets, the more control you want and the more you need to be able to tell them what to do. As much flak as FF12 got for its "if [x] --> then [y]" gambit system, it actually worked quite well, while something like FF15 where interaction is limited to telling them to use limit breaks mostly works since they generally know what to do on their own and there's nothing more complicated that just hitting the enemy with the weapon they're weakest to while the older turn based games in the FF series gave you total control and that also worked, though some people like one and not the other.

I found the AI in BG1&2 to be sufficient for my need for fighters, since once again, there was a small amount of customisation possible (ie protect mages if they're attacked in CC but fight the closest enemy otherwise, keep range and use ranged weapons, drink potion if below [x]% hp etc), but the systm didn't work at all for mages, though even then, you had the ability to not only over-ride the AI briefly, but also to turn it off totally which worked well for harder fights while cleaning up trash you could leave everyone on AI and only intervene if something went wrong. I found the DA:I AI to be less good (much like the rest of the game bar the character intereaction) and it constantly needed babysitting.

ME has a similar thing, but I always found the system a bit clunkier to use than I would have liked when trying to order them to move to various spots, but that might just be a controller thing.

So, yeah, to summarise, I think that some degree of automisation is fine, even required, but the ability to at the very least over-ride the AI for specifics or even turn the AI off and control everything provides a solid boost to gameplay as well as relieving some frustrations with the AI doing silly things when you really need them to do something specific (ie, don't run up to an enemy your mage just launched a fireball at, use an armour-busting ability on a high armour target instead of some mook on 3 health etc). The more you narrow the gameplay choices, the more you can automate the NPC's and visa versa. Also true to some extent with how strong the PC is compared to the NPC's as if the PC is doing 90% of the damage and the NPC's are there for window dressing only, then their combat actions don't matter anywhere near as much as if everyone in a 3-man party is roughly equivalent.

[Vaz]

Diablo 3 has Companions. While these provide a nice little vehicle for additional story content, D3 was more about just stacking retardedly powerful items to get the most amount of affixes. As you progress in difficulty tiers, they provide very little DPS by themselves, and instead act more as a Caddy for carrying more powerful magic effects, but limiting them to being useable while you don't have a party of 4 multiplayers, and having their own health pool, as well as not stacking with your own items. To this end, many Companions get given items which allow your character to multiply their abilities - there is one which links wearers of the same ring, where half damage gets taken from one owner and half damage from the other, so it's essentially halves your damage (with another item for the Companion which makes them immortal). There's another one which links two wearers of the ring by lightning and any enemies in between take damage, while another rings causes Lightning Damage to stun, while there is a Weapon which deals Lightning damage for a stun-lock build etc. They are utility items.

In this game, this is how I want companions.

Dragon Age: Origins was the best interpretation of the companions system (even though that could have been improved); as you progressed through the game and your character+companions became more powerful, they would unlock various "orders" which would allow them to take certain automatic actions, such as when at X health take health potion, or the same for mana, as well giving them the order of what spells they should use. They also had their own stories, and because it's Bioware, you get to Bonk most of them - apart from Shale, and Shale is God. Just **** the pigeons - not literally though.

In this type of game, this is how I want companions; although i want a much more advanced system.

In Skyrim, companions are good fun, but also pretty much eventually just boil down to dragon bone and dragon scale mules. And there does need to be further control over the individuals who are your companions. Not being able to tell them to move out of the way is a joke.

[VoxRationis]

My thoughts:

Baldur's Gate and DA's complete-control systems often make your character feel kind of second-fiddle, but I appreciate the level of control allowed.

Mass Effect 1 had the issue where you couldn't control your squadmates separately, reducing your ability to do proper tactical placement. ME2's giving you the ability to place them separately was great, except it was largely unnecessary, because cover between squadmates and the target no longer mattered (though cover between you and the target did, even for squadmates) and the squadmates were so terrible at actually shooting that they were only good for the power wheel.

I have no idea why they stripped the tactics system down so much for DA:I compared with DA:O. I seriously doubt that the tactics system, being basically a bunch of if-then statements, was taxing the system to the degree that it needed removal, and it's always been an optional system. In particular the removal made no sense, because Inquisition was more action-oriented, and having a robust tactics system helps reduce the amount of pausing and micro-management you have to do with your party members.

[Qwertystop]

Xenoblade Chronicles was heavy on the NPC companions - party of three but you only directly control one of them at a time. All too often, builds/loadouts depend as much on "the AI doesn't know how to properly use $THING so I guess it's not worth investing points in unless I want to play them." Notably, Reyn's Last Stand is a move that revives him (with boosts) if he dies within 15 seconds of using it. Similar goes for... any other Aura (self-buff) and any conditional or combo-based ability (they'll use them if the condition comes up... but also are perfectly willing to waste the cooldown for damage without said condition).

On the other hand, it could have worked a lot better in theory - fights are fairly constrained, there should have been plenty of room to bring the AI up to the level of planning perfectly around the player's and their own cooldowns, at minimum, even without e.g. estimating enemy damage output for preemptive defenses and suchlike.

[russdm]

How matter you program them, I think you should consider limiting the number to 5-6 max. That should allow for better focus on characterizing them. Baldur's Gate had a huge number of potential party members, but very few worth bringing with you. If the total number of characters that you can bring with you means you have a party of 3-5, then you should not have more than 5 or six total companions. A small party, like of 3, while mean many will be left behind.

In Knights of the Old Republic 1, you can get Force-Using companions. As a result, not all of the other party members get brought along. Neverwinter Nights 2 had 11 companions, of which you could only bring 3-4. That means most will remain behind. Mask of the Betrayer gave you a smaller number, and you were usually likely to have all of them with you. That increases time spent with them.

The main issue for this is about involvement. Why are these companions actually traveling with you for? Why do they stick around, and trail in your wake? Giving the answer, "It is a RPG", is poor design. Why does the PC character to have the companion with them? Especially after just meeting them? There needs to be reasons that are tied into the story you are telling. As opposed to how it has been done.

Your Character will likely have their backstory made by you in some form, but this companions already exist in game and should have their own desires/wants/needs/wishes reflect that rather than having it fit for the pc. They need motivations to them, reasons for joining you and sticking you through it all. RPGs have been terrible at this, in my opinion.

HK-47 travels with you because you own him, that works. Bastila Shan travels with you because you be getting visions, that works. Carth Onasi travels with you because ???, He actually doesn't have a reason beyond Game. Canderous Ordo travels with you to engage in battle, that works. Garrus comes with you because he has reasons. Wrex comes because of reasons. Each of which make sense in universe. This is key for believable companions, that you would want to interact with.

Another point is that companions should have reasons why they would join you for the main quest as opposed for something smaller. A companion with the goal of removing somebody alone should not be joining for the rest without some kind of reason that goes beyond Game. I don't know how other players feel, but when a companion is joining mainly because of Game (The fact that it is a RPG) then it fails to engage me. These companions should have reasons why they want to help in the main quest, and those reasons should in universe application.

If the reasons aren't good enough, then the companions should just leave. We do not need Carth, we already have two who can do his job, and anyone, including the pc, can fly the ship. Companions should be treated as characters in their own right.

[Anteros]

Carth comes with you because you're stuck in a desperate situation together and he has no choice, then you bond over the experience and he sees the chance to be part of something hugely important to the galaxy. It's not that ridiculous.

[Trekkin]

I tend not to like having companions in RPGs for most of the reasons mentioned above, but also because they feel like an attempt to solve problems that shouldn't exist.

Take Neverwinter Nights 2. Companions here serve two roles: they fill out the requisite class niches in the D&D system and they exposit to you about their problems. Either one of these would be fine, but they conflict all the time. You the player will make one or more of them redundant; if you're playing a Rogue, for example, you probably don't need Neeshka. But that means you miss out on Influence dialogue, which blocks off content and locks you into certain story events and basically punishes you for being a certain class. Yes, the Influence system is flawed and feels silly in operation, but it would have felt a lot less so if all the characters were with the party all the time and just didn't fight so you only missed an opportunity to enjoy their characterization as a result of a conscious choice on your part. So I guess that's my first preference: companions as characters should not be subordinated to companions as gamepieces.

As to my preferred level of independence, I really like scripting combined with party-wide overrides. I can't remember a game that has done this really well in its entirety, but it keeps me from having to play four characters at once if I can just pre-program them to do whatever list of things I want. That said, a well-designed campaign will disrupt those plans, so I also like when there's a button I can press to, say, instruct the entire party to converge on my target or pick their own targets or drop everything and save me. That, I think, is a robust balance between player control and time spent playing non-player characters.

[factotum]

I tend not to like having companions in RPGs for most of the reasons mentioned above, but also because they feel like an attempt to solve problems that shouldn't exist.

On the other hand, if you want to be able to access all the content the game offers *without* companions, then your main character has to be some sort of perfect Mary Sue who can do everything--pick locks, talk people down, fight, blast things with magic and/or heavy weapons depending on setting, etc. I actually prefer being able to specialise my main character and rely on companions to do the stuff I can't do, because it just seems more organic and believable that way. Of course, if you don't mind not being able to access parts of the game because of lack of skills (e.g. I can't join the Fighter's Guild because I barely know which end of a sword is the pointy bit) then that works, too--see Morrowind for a good example of that in action.

[Kaptin Keen]

Any discussion about NPC's ends up being a discussion of AI.

AI ... basically ... doesn't work. It's only ever a string of If/Then's, and that's as adaptable as it gets. Bottom line, I'd rather have something else.

Have NPC's actually do something. I'm going to use LoL as an example. What I'd like to see is ... say I'm Karthus (a mage), and I can pick from a line-up of sidekicks. Do I want a healer, a tank, a ranged damage dealer?

The important part is to make it ... directly affect gameplay. So if I pick Braum to tag along, I want his knock-up/stun thing to be something that's actually useful to me. So for instance, I know I want to be able to have Braum either cast it at the start of a fight, or as a setup for my big finisher.

Something along those lines. I hope that makes sense.

[Grim Portent]

The two games I liked the companions in most were DA:O and Summoner 2.

DA:O as was mentioned above had a nicely programmable if->then system for companions that made it easy to slot them into whatever role you were trying to build them for.

Summoner 2 had a less micromanagey system as I recall, but the AI was decent at filling the role it was assigned. As I remember each character had some presets you could toggle between to determine what they did in combat, something like melee, ranged, spellcaster, healer and a couple of hybrid roles. Melee and it's hybrids would get up in the enemies face and run through a combination of melee combos and the odd special ability, ranged would avoid the enemy but otherwise function basically the same, and so on with the caster variants. Anyone not told to fight in melee would run a short distance when attacked in melee, before trying to turn around and join in again.

Worked pretty well, especially since while you could only control 1 of the three party members at a time, you could switch between them at will if you needed one to act outside their settings for a bit.

[Trekkin]

On the other hand, if you want to be able to access all the content the game offers *without* companions, then your main character has to be some sort of perfect Mary Sue who can do everything--pick locks, talk people down, fight, blast things with magic and/or heavy weapons depending on setting, etc. I actually prefer being able to specialise my main character and rely on companions to do the stuff I can't do, because it just seems more organic and believable that way. Of course, if you don't mind not being able to access parts of the game because of lack of skills (e.g. I can't join the Fighter's Guild because I barely know which end of a sword is the pointy bit) then that works, too--see Morrowind for a good example of that in action.

You could have multiple paths to the content, though, which is probably something that should happen anyway: putting a locked door in the player's way and a key amid a bunch of monsters (and only awarding XP for opening the door) lets rogues feel canny without anyone feeling like they've missed something. Locking every other chest and breaking the items inside when bashed open just feels petty.

Part of the problem with NWN2 was that in some ways you were forced to specialise, though: most egregiously, only your main character could use dialogue skills and only certain classes got dialogue skills. If you didn't have Diplomacy on your class skill list, there was nothing companions could do for you to remedy that and certain parts of the game (particularly the trial) suffer as a result.

I guess I just see "you must have this skill to pass" as a problem to be solved through level design rather than by putting those skills in companions that must also do other things, since that gets into the overloading problem I mentioned above.

[factotum]

Personally I really don't have a problem with parts of the game being gated off so that only certain characters can get there. If the game is good enough then playing it through a second time with a different character to see the missed parts isn't a hardship. If the game isn't that good, adding more of it isn't likely to be much help. Even Bethesda are OK with this--there are four distinct endings to Fallout 4, and you can't possibly do them all on a single playthrough, you have to at least reload from an earlier save to go down the other route.

[Erloas]

I think it was part of the class I picked, but I really didn't like DA:O. I never even finished it because several of the fights near the end were just exercises in frustration and I don't need that sort of exercise so I left the game. I really didn't like the companion control either, maybe I just didn't spend enough time customizing the AI but it seemed like leaving a character for more than a few actions in any harder fight meant restarting the fight because they would go do something stupid. And *program my companions to not be stupid* was not the game I wanted to play.

In ME I liked the companions and never had a problem with them. I can't really remember if they did much of anything but they didn't seem to be necessary and they weren't annoying so as far as I'm concerned that is a win.

In a tactical game, like Fallout 1&2 and Tactics and Wastelands 2 being able to control everyone was vital. Part of that was the lethality of most enemies and that most companions and the main character were all pretty much equivalent in power. Playing everyone and having them execute the tactics you want was very important and a lot of the fun of the game.

[VoxRationis]

How matter you program them, I think you should consider limiting the number to 5-6 max. That should allow for better focus on characterizing them. Baldur's Gate had a huge number of potential party members, but very few worth bringing with you. If the total number of characters that you can bring with you means you have a party of 3-5, then you should not have more than 5 or six total companions. A small party, like of 3, while mean many will be left behind.

In Knights of the Old Republic 1, you can get Force-Using companions. As a result, not all of the other party members get brought along. Neverwinter Nights 2 had 11 companions, of which you could only bring 3-4. That means most will remain behind. Mask of the Betrayer gave you a smaller number, and you were usually likely to have all of them with you. That increases time spent with them.

Oh yeah, I forgot about the game party size vs. home base party size issues. Somehow. They're actually one of my biggest pet peeves with party dynamics in Bioware games. Nothing was more refreshing in the Citadel DLC for ME3 than when someone says "Shame we can't all go with you" and Shepard says "Why not?"
Now, sometimes there's a good reason for this. In the first Mass Effect game, for example, the large amount of integration with the Mako probably means that ground teams wouldn't be larger than the Mako's carrying capacity, and that can be whatever the design team says it is (although I'm given to understand that RL infantry fighting vehicles normally carry well more than 3 people). But the second, and largely the third, games have you dispensed from a mostly-empty drop shuttle at the start of most missions and then proceeding on foot from there.
Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age, by contrast, have you walk everywhere you go, so there's no particular in-game reason why you are limited to your party setup. KotOR has similar problems; the only transport you take is the ship that everyone else is explicitly waiting around on, presumably playing poker and smoking cigars while you get yourself killed by assault droids. Even in the very final battle, where the stakes for both you and the galaxy at large are as high as they can be, and an all-in effort seems more than justified, everyone hangs back.
Skyrim and Fallout, though, have perhaps the most infuriating limitation, because it extends, without logical justification, to in-universe dialogue. In Skyrim, you can ask people to come with you when you're already traveling with someone. These could be hardened mercenaries who are going to be well-paid, or members of your fanatical organization, or your feudal vassals, sworn to defend your life with their own, or people you've aided to the degree where they'll normally follow you through ridiculous and unnecessary dangers without question. These individuals will then all say "Look's like you've got someone with you already," as though that were a reasonable answer, and blow you off. The concept of traveling in a trio, rather than a pair, is unreasonable to these people who will gladly get into fistfights with dragons for you and then carry the dragons' parts all around Skyrim while you find merchants who will buy them, even though having more than two people would render both tasks much easier. At least with Bioware games it's mostly a UI thing that stops you from having everyone with you at once.

In short, I really don't like arbitrary party size restrictions. They should go away, either due to companions not being in the game, adjustment of the number of available companions, or the design of challenges such that party size has little effect on the difficulty of fights.

[LibraryOgre]

The two games I liked the companions in most were DA:O and Summoner 2.

DA:O as was mentioned above had a nicely programmable if->then system for companions that made it easy to slot them into whatever role you were trying to build them for.

DA:O's AI system is part of why I quit it. It was horrible, and wouldn't leave them to simply do what I said. It was like managing toddlers. "Oh, you stopped paying attention to me for 3 seconds. I'm going to go stand in the fire, now, despite being told to stand next to you."

Summoner 2 had a less micromanagey system as I recall, but the AI was decent at filling the role it was assigned. As I remember each character had some presets you could toggle between to determine what they did in combat, something like melee, ranged, spellcaster, healer and a couple of hybrid roles. Melee and it's hybrids would get up in the enemies face and run through a combination of melee combos and the odd special ability, ranged would avoid the enemy but otherwise function basically the same, and so on with the caster variants. Anyone not told to fight in melee would run a short distance when attacked in melee, before trying to turn around and join in again.

Worked pretty well, especially since while you could only control 1 of the three party members at a time, you could switch between them at will if you needed one to act outside their settings for a bit.

That one worked well, and reminded me of KotOR in a lot of ways.

One thing I like? When the non-active party members are USEFUL. Like, they're doing something, not just putzing around wherever you left them. KotOR and KotOR2 kind of did this, in that you could swing by your party members in the ship and get them to help you in various ways (security spikes, grenades, stims, etc.).

[Anteros]

You could have multiple paths to the content, though, which is probably something that should happen anyway: putting a locked door in the player's way and a key amid a bunch of monsters (and only awarding XP for opening the door) lets rogues feel canny without anyone feeling like they've missed something. Locking every other chest and breaking the items inside when bashed open just feels petty.

Part of the problem with NWN2 was that in some ways you were forced to specialise, though: most egregiously, only your main character could use dialogue skills and only certain classes got dialogue skills. If you didn't have Diplomacy on your class skill list, there was nothing companions could do for you to remedy that and certain parts of the game (particularly the trial) suffer as a result.

I guess I just see "you must have this skill to pass" as a problem to be solved through level design rather than by putting those skills in companions that must also do other things, since that gets into the overloading problem I mentioned above.

No way. I'm not going to bring a rogue along or invest in lock-picking if I can just open every treasure with some alternate method. That's pointless.

The problem with these types of discussions is that we all have different tastes. I don't think there's a universally "best" way to handle AI in a game. In fact, I don't mind different games having different AI types. It mixes things up and keeps it interesting.

[DnD Coliseum]

always let them in the background waiting for the party to take initiative.

[warty goblin]

I think there's really only one universal: You shouldn't spend a significant amount of time fighting the game to get your companions to do something sensible.

Beyond that it very much depends on the game. For something like a turn based RPG, you generally don't even need a party member AI, so the concern is entirely one of story and gameplay balance. For a real time with pause game, you need enough of an AI to keep the AI from borking everything up every single second - see NWN 2 for the masterclass in how not to do this. For a more actiony game, you probably want a more capable unit AI, possibly combined with some sort of squad command system.

My general mechanical bias is that if I'm going to have to micro like a mad thing anyway, just make the damn game turnbased instead of making me hammer pause all the time.


In terms of story impact, my general feeling is after about 5 or 6 tops possible companions, you start to hit negative returns. The combinatorics for interesting interactions become exceedingly unfavorable for the writers, my ability to care about another rando person's tragic backstory decays, and the whole thing just ends up unfocused.

[VoxRationis]

The problem with these types of discussions is that we all have different tastes. I don't think there's a universally "best" way to handle AI in a game. In fact, I don't mind different games having different AI types. It mixes things up and keeps it interesting.

You know, it might be interesting if the same game had different AI types... Certain companions are independently-minded and do their own thing, accepting only broad direction, while others allow for micro-management, with the difference based on relationship to the player, personality, and character builds.

[warty goblin]

You know, it might be interesting if the same game had different AI types... Certain companions are independently-minded and do their own thing, accepting only broad direction, while others allow for micro-management, with the difference based on relationship to the player, personality, and character builds.

This seems like one of those ideas that's really cool on paper - and it is a cool idea - but would probably not be so hot in execution. The problem being that gamers (myself included) don't tend to like negative repercussions for build choices. And unless the AI is really good, not being able to control your squaddies is going to be a downside. And if it is good enough that you don't need it, players who do optimize for controlling them directly will feel shafted.

...Although I could guess that there's an argument that something like Spellforce sort of gets there, since you control heroes substantially differently than rando peons. Really, more games should try to hybridize RPGs and RTSs ala Spellforce, it's s surprisingly natural combination and helps liven up both sides. As a bonus, the standard RPG plot of rally forces to cause is a lot more satisfying when you then get to use those forces to kick in some teeth.

[Erloas]

There are a few that have mechanics like that. Usually if you're not on good terms with them they are more likely to run away or go rogue. Especially if they get hurt a lot.
Although even in those games it doesn't seem to be a lot.
Usually micromanaging team feelings is at odds with the overall design and goal of the game.
That is the hard part, finding a game design where that enhances the rest of the game rather than being an annoyance or mini-game at odds with the rest of the game design.

[Rodin]

I tend to like the way the Uncharted games handled them.

Your allies are there, getting shot at and returning fire. However, they're basically invulnerable and thus don't need to be babysat. They don't do sufficient damage to take the fight by themselves either, so you're still doing the work. Their role is to make it feel like a group fight and provide witty banter.

I don't need to be ordering NPC companions around in real time, even if it's just to command them to use special abilities. Let them do their thing, and let me do my thing. Just make sure they don't get in the way or require me to babysit them.

[warty goblin]

I tend to like the way the Uncharted games handled them.

Your allies are there, getting shot at and returning fire. However, they're basically invulnerable and thus don't need to be babysat. They don't do sufficient damage to take the fight by themselves either, so you're still doing the work. Their role is to make it feel like a group fight and provide witty banter.

I don't need to be ordering NPC companions around in real time, even if it's just to command them to use special abilities. Let them do their thing, and let me do my thing. Just make sure they don't get in the way or require me to babysit them.

This is generally my view in action style games, unless they are substantively built around squad command. Something like Republic Commando or Brothers in Arms puts enough work into interface, AI, and level design that it actually adds to the game. By the time you get to squad controls as anemic as Mass Effect: Andromeda's, I'd really rather they just used the d-pad to let me select guns.

[factotum]

Your allies are there, getting shot at and returning fire. However, they're basically invulnerable and thus don't need to be babysat.

I think they also don't break stealth in any way, which is a good thing--it's ridiculous the number of times you'll be sneaking around in Skyrim and Fallout and the enemy spots you because your companion ain't as good at stealth as you are!

[Rodin]

I think they also don't break stealth in any way, which is a good thing--it's ridiculous the number of times you'll be sneaking around in Skyrim and Fallout and the enemy spots you because your companion ain't as good at stealth as you are!

Of course, this does sometimes lead to suspension of disbelief moments.

[LibraryOgre]

I tend to like the way the Uncharted games handled them.

Your allies are there, getting shot at and returning fire. However, they're basically invulnerable and thus don't need to be babysat. They don't do sufficient damage to take the fight by themselves either, so you're still doing the work. Their role is to make it feel like a group fight and provide witty banter.

I don't need to be ordering NPC companions around in real time, even if it's just to command them to use special abilities. Let them do their thing, and let me do my thing. Just make sure they don't get in the way or require me to babysit them.

That would be nice... a basic DoT and Aggro Soak, letting you deal with big groups more or less solo. It might not work as well in a more melee focused game, however.

[Anteros]

If the companions are basically just going to be window dressing for fights I'd rather not bother with them at all. It's fine for games like Uncharted because the focus isn't on working with a squad...but for more team focused games like RPGs or even squad based shooters I want them to actually do something.

[Amaril]

If the companions are basically just going to be window dressing for fights I'd rather not bother with them at all. It's fine for games like Uncharted because the focus isn't on working with a squad...but for more team focused games like RPGs or even squad based shooters I want them to actually do something.

I find it interesting that you say this, because I don't think of RPGs as being necessarily team-focused by default. They can be, certainly, but I don't see how an RPG that has NPC companions as just window-dressing is less within the genre standard. Or did you just mean specifically team-focused RPGs?