top 5 crpg party members of all time (currently)
(originally posted January 20, 2024)
I suppose I have obliquely referenced my (entirely hypothetical) "Top 5 CRPG Party Members of All Time" list often enough, which - like all my lists of such a type - shifts from moment to moment and is not precisely ranked. Consider the following a snapshot of my current mental state.
Glory - Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall
Get yourself a cyber-goth waifu with giant murder-talons instead of fingers. Her backstory - despite edging into abuse-survivor melodrama - is intimately tied with Shadowrun's worldbuilding and game mechanics in a genuinely interesting way. Her loyalty mission is also a great mix of exploration, combat, and an honest-to-goodness dialogue setpiece; you have to actually pay attention to what's being said and react accordingly to get the ideal outcome.
Mordin Solus - Mass Effect 2
There are other companions that I probably "like" more, but Mordin hits that sweet spot of being wacky and likeable while also being a compelling character tied to the rest of the story and worldbuilding. They somehow made a character who actively assisted in perpetrating a galactic genocide seem like a cool dude.
Kim Kitsuragi - Disco Elysium
If a game only has a single companion, they better be a good one; Kim is thankfully one of the best. His stoic professionalism is consistently hilarious as a grounding foil no matter what kind of wacky bullshit you get up to and makes his handful of sillier moments land even harder.
Dak'kon - Planescape: Torment
Shortcut to making a character I like: make an aged zen type who's also a fundamentally broken person due to an inherent torment at the core of their identity. Dak'kon is so cool that he singlehandedly changed the image of githzerai in DND lore from chaotic to lawful purely on his vibes. The whole Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon questline is a great example of the design ethos compared to other RPGs that allows PS:T to remain a guiding light of the genre.
Durance - Pillars of Eternity
There have certainly been evil clerics/healers in CRPGs (Viconia DeVir of Baldur's Gate chief among them), but Durance is my favorite. His specific flavor of borderline-unhinged fire-and-brimstone preacher is never not a hoot, especially with the actor's incredible vocal performance. And - as you may have noticed is a running theme - his backstory is deeply rooted in the specifics of Pillars' worldbuilding and plot in an interesting way.
Kaelyn the Dove - Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer
I am not immune to Hot Lady Knight. I am especially not immune to Hot Lady Knight devoted to a fundamentally doomed crusade due to sheer bullheaded insistence that the state of the universe is not right, regardless of what the gods have to say on the matter. Put another tally on the "fundamentally broken person due to an inherent torment at the core of their identity" board.
getting a report that's the sixth character on a Top 5 list and to that I say whoooo caaaares
As for a favorite "main character" in a CRPG, I've spoken about my thoughts on this previously. I generally don't have much interest in a blank slate player character, because they just serve as a vector to tell me -the player - how good and cool I am. There's certainly value in these games offering a large amount of choice and showing reactivity to those choices, but I personally prefer a bit more specificity in a protagonist. I'd rather be assigned a role to play than fully define one for myself; that's why I played Dark Urge in BG3 rather than make a fully custom character.
With that in mind, it's gotta be the Detective in Disco Elysium (with Planescape: Torment's The Nameless One as a close second). Guy's a drunk fuck-up of a cop no matter what you do; you instead get to decide what flavor of drunk fuck-up of a cop he is, which I find much more interesting.
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