Worst BioWare companions

[Breakdown]

Sten from Dragon Age Origins. Early in the game, I decided to take him along on a trip to Denerim, and get ambushed on the way. The first fight he's in, and Sten goes down pretty much immediately. When I finally get to Denerim, he starts going on about how I'm a rubbish Grey Warden. I wish I'd left him in the cage for the Darkspawn.

 

[setting_son]

Carth from Knights of the Old Republic. For everyone who found Kaiden to be a bit whiny, I give you Carth - moaning his way across the galaxy and dragging everyone down by complaining about all of his problems. Nobody cares, Carth.

 

[jezcentral]

Mine are Samara and ME2 Jack.

Although I disliked Fenris intensely, it was always for who he was, not because of bad writing or acting. In fact, I could completely understand his motivations, and in his position, I would probably feel the same way too. Good acting, good writing. I liked all the DA2 companions, although I never saw Carver (after the opening scene), but found Sebastian a bit tacked-on and inconsequential. (He was DLC).

 

[KINGBeerZ]

A few that I didn't like much were:
T3-M4 in KOTOR, he got better in KOTOR 2 and seemed to develop more of a personality, but in the first game he was just boring and felt like dead weight whenever I had to include him in my party for hacking or something.
Ashley, she was always so darn bland, Kaiden was pretty guilty of this as well, even if you romanced him, and there was nothing that either of them could do that couldn't be done better by Tali, Wrex or Liara (in ME:1)
Although I've not used him I get the feeling that I'd absolutely hate Sebastian partly because of what he does during the last straw (I won't spoils)

Also I feel like I'm the only person who liked Anders in DA:2, I actually quite liked him in that, and really like his romance plot, but I can understand people being angry about the change in his character, but it's kind of understandable that he'd be traumatised after some of the stuff that Justice has made him do.

 

[laggyteabag]

Couple of honorable mentions:
<spoiler=Dog, Dragon Age: Origins>

The problem with the Dog isn't really that he is annoying or anything, it is just that the way that they implemented him was just dreadful. To include the dog in your party, he takes up a character slot, yet he is nowhere near fleshed out enough as a fighter to be worth the character slot. Thankfully via mods you can have him as an extra character, and in Dragon Age 2 he is a summon, but damn that was a terrible design choice.
<spoiler=Aveline, Dragon Age 2>

The problem that I have with Aveline mostly stems from being the only tank in the game (excluding mods or a tank Hawke), as a result, if you want to survive most of your fights, you are pretty much forced to bring her along. For the first few missions this is okay, but it gets to a point where you start to realise that she really has nothing to say and just isn't that interesting of a character, but you have very little choice in the matter if you want to survive.

I feel old, everyone else is going for Dragon Age and Mass Effect. ;_;

I do remember Jade Empire, I had it on my old Xbox, but I think the game broke and I never got to finish it. I think there is a version on Steam, but last I checked, it didn't work on something that I had so I never picked it up.

 

[DuctTapeJedi]

Bishop from NWN2 - Total jackass

Dear Lord, I'd forgotten about him...
But yes, agreement.

Also, the whole "damaged heroine who is really mean to hide her past/issues" trope gets old a little fast.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Part of what made me dislike Dragon Age 2 was how there was only one companion I really enjoyed having around (Varric I think...the narrating Dwarf). While most other people have pointed out Avaline and, Fenris my absolutely most hated companion in DA2 was Isabela. Her personality was grating to the point of being painful and she was such a poorly constructed poc*-character it took me until JUST NOW to realize she was meant to be a poc and not just have that thing Megan Fox has where it looks like she's covered in a constant layer of dirt and, grime.

* = person of color. I have nothing against PoC companions, it just seemed like Isabela was an incredibly lazy attempt at trying to make one.

 

[BaronVH]

It has to be that half elf whatever in BG2. I think her name was Aarie or something. All dwarves in Dragon Age. I dislike my European styled fantasy settings with dude sounding like he came from a biker bar in the American Southwest. Yes, I want my dwarves to sound like drunken Scotts. But since we are on worst, how about best? The robot in KOTOR, HK somethingorother. Exclamation: Die, meatbag!

 

[Daniel Janhagen]

I like that people don't agree with eachother, and that some people's picks are my favourites, AND other people's favourites!.
I was going to go for Anomen, because he's pretty annoying, but he does that so well I just can't. Instead, I'll pick the NWN1 OC henchmen. Not annoying exactly, just useless and uninteresting. SoU expansion partners are only a slight improvement (with the exception of Deekin, but he doesn't really get good til HotU).

 

[Kingjackl]

I honestly found the cast of Knights of the Old Republic to be boring as hell. They all had wooden dialogue and worse voice-acting. Even the ones that everyone raves about like Canderous or HK-47 just sounded bored. I didn't play long enough to unlock Jolee Bindo, who I've heard is another favourite, so I'm not sure if he bucks the trend. Even if he did, it probably wouldn't matter to me.

Jade Empire was slightly better; Dawn Star, Silk Fox and Sky were dull (the love interests, natch), but the rest of them were pretty decent. I found myself growing quite fond of Sagacious Zu and Wild Flower, and Black Whirlwind was always a pleasure. I wish the guy from the Celestial Bureaucracy had played a larger role, he cracked me up.

As for Mass Effect, I reckon Samara was pretty boring, but that's about it. I seem to be rare among Mass Effect fans in that I don't have the energy to hate characters that makes me want to kill them off over minor personality flaws. I find that attitude childish, and hearing people talk about it just makes me groan.

 

[Burnouts3s3]

This might be a weird choice, but here it goes.

Tallis.

Now, I want to be upfront about this: I don't hate Felicia Day, I thought she worked in Fallout: New Vegas. I don't hate celebrity inserts, Mass Effect proved that Keith David, Seth Green and even Freddie Prince Jr. can still be effective in their roles. I don't even mind the constant glibbing, because lord knows Alistair or Varric or Isabela can't go 5 steps without being snarky.

No, Tallis simply doesn't fit into the Dragon Age universe. She's made up of all of these traits that are supposed to make her 'endearing' but instead end up making insufferable. She literally spends 50 seconds showing how awesome she is by killing everyone while Hawke and friends just stare an watch. Every companion has to mention how pretty she is.

Spoiler: And her reveal

That she's a Qunari agent still doesn't work. She's supposedly Ben Hassarath, a part of the diplomatic corps, but she kills people like it's nothing. The Qunari are supposedly stern and strict, she keeps glibbing constantly. She's supposedly a loyal agent, she doesn't seem to have any problem breaking the rules when she feels like it.

Even her humor is all over the place. Again, Dragon Age is known for its humor, but at least they help define a character. Alistair hides his insecurities through his humor. Morrigan doesn't know how to interact with people without her acid wit, even Sten does the deadpan so well, it might be he doesn't even realize the jokes he's making.

Tallis is too in the know. This isn't using humor to hide a character flaw or add weight, this is literally winking to the camera, 'I'm being too smart for my own good'.

I hate throwing this term around, but she really does feel like a self-insert character, and what's worse is that the Bioware writing staff apparently didn't even bother correcting some of the lore hiccups in Day's script. (Day apparently wrote MotA).

So, that's my two cents.

 

[Rayce Archer]

Henpecked Hou. That henpecked bastard promised me drunken boxing. I was gonna be Jackie Chan! But sadly, it does not level along with other styles, I need Henpecked Lou to use it..

Just..

Grr..

Damn you Henpecked scam artist Lou!

Edit: I feel old, everyone else is going for Dragon Age and Mass Effect. ;_;

It's especially bad because Jade Empire basically REQUIRES that you master magic, and a weapon, and a hand-to-hand style (of course you can go shifting and skip all that junk too). Taking Hou not only gives you a middling to crummy fighting style, it robs you of the focus or mana regen provided by other allies, making golem battles all but impossible.

Of course that system was terrible anyway. It's the main reason I haven't played the game again.

 

[Dalisclock]

Honorable Mentions: Garrus (ugh talk about a whiny pissbaby),

I generally like Garrus but it seems like most of his conversations seem to lead to "I know we're SUPPOSED to arrest people, but can't we just kill them".

It's getting annoying explaining to him how executing people is not cool.

Though it does nicely set up what happened to him in ME2

 

[chocolate pickles]

In fairness, Dragon age two was just a steaming pile of turd in nearly aspect (apart from Merill - though only because of the welsh accent)

Honorable mentions of mine go to:

Zaeed massani (I don't give a shit if you think your some kind of badass, because in terms of actual game play and character, your shit)

Sten (I'm pretty sure that his character development takes up less than a paragraph)

Liara (she does a full walter white to Heisenberg between 1 and 2 for no real reason)

I was almost going to put down Tali, but was really only the second game where i disliked her for being irrational.

 

[Cyberstrike_v1legacy]

Mass Effect Kaiden and Tali
Mass Effect 2 Jacob and Thane
Mass Effect 3 Vega

Dragon Age: Origins Sten and Morrigan
Dragon Age: Origins-Awakening Anders and Howe
Dragon Age II Sebastion and Fenris

 

[Michael Tabbut]

It seems that I'm one of the rare few that actually liked the companions (and the game itself) from Dragon Age 2...except one. ANDERS. I never liked him in Awakening and in 2, while a decent mage, he just pisses me off. I always killed him after he blew up the chantry just to be rid of him.

 

[hermes]

I never played Dragon Age 2, and I don't have the fondest memories of Dragon Age 1; so I will limit myself to Mass Effect.

Out of them, my least favorite is Kaidan. He seems rather dull, has what amounts as a cameo in 2, and doesn't get much better in 3. I thought his story was interesting enough, but I didn't bought his delivery.

 

[Sanunes]

I can only really remember the recent games (Mass Effect and Dragon Age) for I rarely go back to replay old games, but there has always been a companion or two that I won't group with. I am also nervous to go back and play their older games for I think my nostalgia goggles are in full effect for those games too.

Mass Effect 1: Its hard for me to really pick unless you want to talk about the "idea" behind a character because unless you were talking to them on the Normandy they didn't feel like they had much personality. If based on idea it probably would have been Tali, for her nativity got on my nerves.

Mass Effect 2: Jack is my least favorite here, for they tried too hard with the character design so whenever Jack speaks its always a grating experience.

Mass Effect 3: Vega for basically the same reason as Jack for his personality felt very forced, but it didn't bother me nearly as much as Jack's did.

Dragon Age: Origins: Sten just felt flat to me, now it could have been the writing or the voice actor here, but I only had him in my party for one game, the rest of the time he sat in camp.

Dragon Age 2: I have a hard time with this one for I would almost always pick Anders, but I am never sure if its because of I didn't like his character or I didn't like the changes to his character. The other for me with Dragon Age 2 was Carver, I stopped my first game with him because I just got tired of him and restarted the game with a non-mage to get Bethany.

 

[ClockworkAngel]

This post will contain *SPOILERS!!!!!* for Dragon Age 2.

It's been years since I played the original Mass Effect, but I remember finding Kaidan Alenko extremely boring. Maybe he gets better in ME3 but .. well, yeah. I actually liked Karth back when I played KotOR, and Kaidan just seemed like the poor man's Karth. Or maybe by the time I played ME1, that kind of character bored me. But I would talk to him during the "okay, now go to talk all your crew members" portions of the game, and I just couldn't get into his story. I think the story itself was interesting. I just found Kaidan very bland.

I really hated Merrill in Dragon Age 2. She was so stupid, the absolute worst kind of naive. At every turn I warned her. Hey, blood magic is bad. Uh, consorting with demons is bad. Hey, remember when I said that this wasn't a good idea? She was stubborn, and refused to accept that, maybe, she didn't know everything. And then after everything went down in her storyline? She still refused to see what her blood magic had caused. "Why wouldn't they let me help them?" Oh my god she pissed me off. I think I would have killed her if I had been given the chance. I played a mage, so my Hawke definitely would know the dangers of blood magic.

I also really disliked Tallis for the same reasons Burnouts3s3 mentioned above.

I liked Isabela a lot at first, for a lot of reasons. But when I learned that she had been sitting on something extremely plot-crucial for something like four years, which eventually erupted into people getting slaughtered, I lost all interest in her. She's known Hawke for years, a man (in my case) who has braved the Deep Roads, fought Darkspawn, bandits of all size and color, demons of all makes, and even some fucking dragons. But she couldn't bring herself to trust Hawke to help her out of a jam ..

 

[Gamer87]

Jacob - my god is he creepy. At first I thought he was a nice guy, a bit bland, but decent. Then I played ME3 where he has some dialogue that weirded me out just a bit, then I found out he automatically cheats if he's romanced and acts like a complete dick about it and then finally I romanced him in ME2 and man, ewww. "Sneaking into the captain's quarters, heavy risk - but the priiiiizzzee." Just eeew.

Carth - Whiny annoying crybaby that is supposed to be a dashing handsome heart throb. No. Because he has the same voice actor he even ruined Kaidan in ME1 and turned me bi -hell yes I'll romance a cute blue babe instead of another whiny Carth.

Assley - yes Assley in ME3, not Ashley in ME1. I mean, I disliked Ash because of her racism and prejudice, but she grew on me. In ME2 both Kaidan and she are a bit annoying, but in ME3 I just don't recognize Ashley anymore. Her personality has changed for the worse, she has gotten silicon implats in her boobs and lips and overall she's just being a total dick. Compared to Kaidan, Ashley is really being mistrustful and stupid and keeps acting like a jerk.

Dawn Star - she just annoys me a lot.

Miranda - she is interesting as a character, I just dislike her because her attitude and Cerberus beliefs.

Everyone in DA2 except Varric. I am really trying to like these characters, because they have aspects of them that are awesome, cute or funny, but they also all have some MAJOR flaw that makes me hate them.
Spoiler filled rant incoming: Aveline is too by the book and her ineptitude with Donnic drives me nuts, Isabela is a selfish, walking STD who started a fcking war because of her greed, Merrill keeps playing around with demons despite getting proof again and again that they are dangerous and she can't handle them, Carver is just a jerk, Bethany willingly submits to the circle after everything her family has done to keep her safe, Fenris talks shit about my sister and just hates all mages because the actions of one, Anders is soooo whiny and depending on your stance in the mages vs templars confilct, he is either annoyingly whiny about his power to right wrongs or a total terrorist nutcase, Sebastian at first seems like a nice guy, but threatens to INVADE Kirkwall with an army if you don't want to kill one of your other stupid friends.

Sten - while being an interesting cool guy, from a RP perspective I just can't overlook him slaughtering an entire family who had saved him because of his beliefs.

Im sorry about the ranting, I just love Bioware games so much and want them and the characters in them to be good.