Yet More on Skyrim Companions

Bored out of my skull this morning; already read all the way through the /tg/ thread on great game stories (the yandere wood elf was almost worthy of a post here by itself...) and now forced to move on to other entertainments.

The NosCo Weapons sales office is driving me up the goddamned wall with framerate issues that don't want to fix (roombound problems) so I've been tinkering with Skyrim again.

Came across some interesting information this morning. Whilst bumming around the SuCK's official guide looking for the console command I know exists but can't remember to make Aela hire-able before getting to the end of the Companions' questline, I happened across this page: Creating a Companion.

I had wondered idly when toying with them before if I couldn't find any custom stuffs in most downloaded companions because there wasn't any to find -- that Skyrim really was as simple as it looked, and to create a companion all you had to do was add the required factions to an NPC and put them in the world.

According to that page? Yeah, it's that easy. Now, this, needless to say, does not carry with it the array of custom features a true "companion system" like I prefer to use carries... but nonetheless... is a companion system really necessary for Skyrim?

By default, NPCs can use various apparatuses; follow; stay; mule... weapon and armor conditions have been removed, so repairing isn't necessary (or even possible) anymore.

Short of class-changing or such... what else is there to do with a companion system? I mean, really?

Combat styles, follow distances -- all that can be handled via outside plugins without any centralized "system".

The principal complaint left would seem to be that you only get one at a time. Still, though; that can be handled with a standalone plugin, and changed across the whole game -- vanilla followers included.

Well, not by the mod I downloaded to try it. That one did the exact opposite, and made it impossible to get anyone to follow you. Some minor "bug", eh? Still, I must assume others work worth half a shit...

Anyway.

For all the talk of it by me and others, it would seem the "companion system" as we know it is superfluous in Skyrim.

I am officially obsolete. Cheering thought, that. Not like I was ever central to the mod scene in previous games, but it's still a bit depressing.

So, while I won't forgive Bethsoft their shoddy coding in general; nor their perpetual hardon for limiting followers to one at any given time... maybe they didn't screw companion-makers over as badly as I thought, this time around.

Vanilla followers still don't actually follow for shit, though.