Iolo/Shamino/Dupre

One of the things I really particularly enjoyed in Ultima VII (and Serpent Isle) was the cross-banter between Iolo, Shamino and Dupre. These companions existed in previous games, but I felt like it really hit its peak in those games.

I'm hoping/assuming SotA will allow for companions, but with an online game, you usually don't see groups of players each with full parties. Will it be possible to have more than one companion? If not, will there be other ways to try and achieve that cross-talk banter? Will my companion have something to say when I visit Town X and NPC Y?

 

I suppose it's possible that there are companions in the single player mode to help in certain situations, but nothing has been said on the matter. It would probably be easier to scale the single player encounters for a single character rather than add something as complex as a companion.

I do agree, it would be neat to travel with companions again.

 

SWTOR blended this approach by allowing you to have a full party of companions, but only one out with you at any moment. The game was scaled that single person encounters were really aimed for one player, plus their companion. Group content was aimed at 4 people total, which could be any combination of players and companions totaling 4 (such as 4 players, or 2 players and 2 companions).

In single player cut scenes, you could see interactions and banter between multiple companions.

 

If memory serves: I thought that RG (or maybe it was one of the devs) that said there would be companions. I'm not sure if that has changed (or maybe I just dreamed it).

 

If there was one thing that you could point to and say that SWTOR did successfully, it was the single-player experience. But it was an MMO, and they didn't have enough end-game content to keep people around for long after that.

 

I don't want to stray too far from topic, but I quit SWTOR initially because it lacked end game content, but there is plenty of it now and I really enjoy raiding in SWTOR. I'm glad I came back.

 

http://forsakenvirtues.com/tag/recap/page/3/

 

Very much want companions. I agree about the banter in U7, and Dragon Age Origins did a fantastic job of this too. In DAO I would sometimes just walk around to have the banter continue. Some conversations were priceless.

The Prince of Persia with the girl did a really good job with this banter too. Although you had to trigger it which made it easy to miss. I loved the original ending to this game and if you caught all the banter through the game it had even more meaning and punch.

 

I enjoy companion banter, but I hope they limit the number of times something is repeated. I remember hearing the same lines too many times from companions in Dragon's Dogma...

 

Guild Wars had/has a verry detailed companion system that leveled them with you, in the origional campain there were henchmen with "banter" and you could select them based on your class, skills, playstyle and needs. Later with the Shivering Peaks and Nightfall expansions you could give them weapons and pick thier individual skills and sub-classes. You could swap them out between adventures and reset thier skills, weapons and sub-classes for free. You could even enchant thier armor with Runes for further customization.

This game is I think 8 years old (it came out the same time WoW did), so this technology is avalable and not new. I'm not suggesting SoTA do all this but letting people who don't know that this stuff is out there and is pretty cool.

**Also if anyone wants to pass the time with an excelent game while waiting for Shroud, you might think about Guild Wars, it's not a subscription game and you can find it from NC Soft and on Amazon.

 

oh c'mon. they pulled it off in the 90s. It's not like they can't do it now.


Adventuring alone is pretty depressing.

 

The ultima companions really made the game. Even when they were basic white figures, imagining their personalities and what the banter among them would be like added a whole other component to the quests

 

Characters take time to evolve. It might take a few episodes.

 

I always enjoyed looking for and discovering what companions I could bring with me in the Ultima games. The most memorable times for me were in Ultima VII and Part II, I think because of language, dialogue and the overall charm. They just had great personalities and playing was such a treat.

 

Same here. The first thing I would do when I started playing the Ultima games from IV on was to find my companions that I could take along. I also enjoy the banter that games have from the Companions. Sometimes it is the best part, just take a break and see what they talk about. Just don't drink any milk while you are listening.

 

I will miss them....playing U IX now, and miss having them with me.

 

It had an amazing companion system. Did you ever try to run any of the endgame missions using nothing but companions in Factions? It was before the companion customization thing. Talk about difficulty And a lot of times their levels would scale down to the nearest outpost level. So you'd have level 12 or so companions in a 17 zone. One in particular did that in the original. It was a siege in a swamp area. It knocked your companions to 12 and the enemies were 17-18 for normals and 21 or so for bosses.
I haven't really jumped into GW1 in over a year. I think I jumped ship shortly after GW2 launch. It didn't put a dent in the population though which surprised me at that time. I remember they were selling the expansions and stuff in the online store for around 5$ each.
How's the population there these days?

 

A yes, one of my many pushes was to make sure companions would still be in the game. They did say yes.

 

The high end stuff was not always do-able with the companions, they were awesome and all, but couldn't think for themselves and only attacked what you attacked, and alot of times you'd have to enter an instance from the wrong/back side to retain your helper's levels (and alot of times that meant making death-runs to cross the maps).

I've only checked in a few times since GW2, it's kind of dead-ish now days, kind of like UO I think. I believe a lot of people hit that wall and move to F2P games...maybe?
And like UO a lot of people loved it and still log on but really only old, hard-cores and people who've heard the legends of it's greatness ant try it out only to find that the game is still awesome but it's a ghost town compaired to the past.

 

Is a game without Shamino even worth playing? (Yeah, I do have a crush on him )