companions

[Death a Barbar]

Can someone give me some heads up? I've picked up random companions as they came, but I can't seem to interact with at all after the initial recruiting, I've heard this game praised for good writing and characters, but so far the companions only say some one liner here and there and that's it. I don't particularly like their skillsets either so I'm really considering restarting with a custom party. Am I going to miss something? I'm only at chapter three, so I don't know if they'll get livelier, so I would like to know if there is any point bringing them later in the story.

[Wicket W. Warrick]

In BG1, only EE characters (Neera, Dorn, Rasaad) have their own quests. There are some banters, also some different interaction in some encounters, but from a story point of view paly a custom party or choosing the companions doesn't change much. BG2 is a different story.

IN a custom party you can min-max every character. If you do so, the party is much more stronger than the one with companion. I think that this is a drawback: the game becomes easier than it should be. But that's up to you.

[Centurion]

BG1 NPC Project Mod. They interact and many have quests.

[Death a Barbar]

Thanks for clearing that up, I was super confused as most posts online talked about story missions, but I guess people talk about I and II together.

[wendigo211]

I think the "modern standard" of a companion is really the Mass Effect/Dragon Age: Origins companion where you can talk to your companion, they have quests and they interject while you're exploring. Neither BG nor BG2 is going to offer you that experience although BG2 comes closer. BG was Bioware's second game (they made Shattered Steel first), and their first RPG. It has a lot of rough edges and you can really see their evolution from BG to BG2.

Most of the BG companions only have around 100 words of text associated with them. While they did do some clever things for their time, like react to the character's reputation or complement/insult party members they liked/disliked, they're very rudimentary compared to Bioware's later companions. The BG2 companions are kind of a middle ground between the BG and ME companions.