Companion Characters in SWTOR
The folks over at Bioware have confirmed a number of times via the official site, interviews, and panels that companion characters are going to be a part of the game and have an influence on our experience in the world of The Old Republic. But from what I can tell, we don’t really know much about how these NPCs will actually change the game. They are said to have their own story and their own path down the light or dark side.
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| These guys are truly hideous. Are we going to pick our companion? |
Obviously, the dev team is going to draw heavily from their past experience with companion characters in games like KOTOR and Mass Effect. Those seemed to work pretty well, right? And they were integrated into the game in a way that didn’t detract from your story. Let’s just hope we don’t end up with the paper cut-outs like in Guild Wars.
Are you even remotely excited about companion characters in an MMO setting? Vote in the poll and leave us details in the comments!
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Comments
I’m hoping the AI for them is really good so they can legitimately take up a group spot if needed. That would add so much flexibility for smaller groups needing 1 or 2 extra slots filled, or if they’re missing out on a certain class such as a healer or tank they can just have a companion fill in the role for a while until they can get a replacement player. That way you could start dungeon crawling without having to wait until you fill up your group with players. Maybe you get halfway through a dungeon and a friend logs on… just pocket the companion and have the real player join you.
I’ll just go off what I know, as the only Bioware game I’ve played is Knights of the Old Republic, and KOTOR 2, and the Companion Characters fitted in well. But considering the fact that this is an MMO, it kind of puts the fact that it may not work so well. Especially if your going to have some sought of system where you can tag along with your mates on a mission to like, for example, board some Republic Cruiser and eliminate someone or something. Companions would simply be in the way, and then it’d be odd to have about 5 other Jedi’s along with you to have similar Companions, thinking the same thing, having a similar story. Unless they disable companions when it comes to doing co-operative quests, it wouldn’t work. Of course, companions are a large thing in Knights of the Republic 1 and 2, and they worked really well, without them half the storyline would almost be destroyed, but in a MMO it would be odd and probably wouldn’t work well. Although I agree with Kevin’s idea of having like a group quest, and when your short of a player with a particular skill, that possibly a Companion could be in place, that would work well, and it would allow players to play games sucessfully without being bored and waiting. Just my word.
On the whole I’d have to agree with both of you for how Bioware is going to treat companion characters in SWTOR. If I had it my way…they’d be there to help me solo, and provide quests that allow both me and them to level up in some way that really benefits my story.
Like Lord pointed out, they did a fantastic job in KOTOR, and I seem them building upon their successes. Namely, I don’t see companion characters playing any role in group or PVP encounters. Though the Guild Wars implementation of having a couple along to fill out the group would be nice…
Hopefully they’ll be fleshing this idea out for us in the coming months. As they’ve said in some recent official forums posts…the team is waiting for a mechanic or feature to be almost completely finished before announcing it to the community. And to be honest, I’m pretty thankful for that.
FFXI had CC’s. You had to do a quest for them, design them yourself. They really had no personality or story to them… In fact the game really had no story IMO. But none the less in combat they were very very usefull and could temporarily fill spots in groups quite well.