Be honest about Willow

[dudeapocalypse]

She has a fairy tale bimbo personality that doesn't really fit the game setting. I could also do without vanilla interiors being littered with unsuitable collectible toys (maybe it'll be all right in shops or houses with other toys around, but mostly they are out of place).

 

Gameplay-wise though she surpasses any other NV companion, original or not, which is even more impressive considering mod's release date. Much needed combat options, complicated bonding / reputation system, lots of companions and locations comments (and option to turn them off), quests being unlocked after months of in-game time, separate inventory for player's stuff and a lot more.

Everything is also consistently written and well scripted without any serious bugs.

[corridian2112]

Willow, and Heather (FO4) are 2 of the best companion mods I have ever played.

I usually do not even bother with anyone else when I comeback and play NV. Perhaps if I play the mega mods that expand on NV that may change but for now, that is the way Willow stands with me.

Peace

[Guildmasterron]

For me, Willow is a must have companion in NV. She is so great. Very well written, she feels very human to me. She's witty and fun and she doesn't shy away from a fight.

[laclongquan]

One important note about her vagueness in character:

 

That make she fit everyone and doesnt grate too much on anyone.

 

Let's say making her a strong independent woman, that would overlap with Veronica and Cass's template.

 

A soft sweet woman would grate too much with current atmosphere.

 

What kind of personality would you prefer Willow have?

[B4llsAndB4y0n3ts]

Wow, this is an old, old thread. Apologies to anyone who's upset by me resurrecting it, but I do have some thoughts on the topic, and I'd rather just continue a thread on the topic that's already here rather than cluttering the landscape with a new thread on an old topic.

 

So...

 

I'm going to leave discussion of the mechanics behind Willow off the table here; the original question was about her character. To that point, I'm... conflicted. She strikes me as being an extremely sheltered person. And yet... with the backstory she's given, that's perfectly fitting. This is a young woman (probably early 20s, from the characterization) who grew up deep in the NCR, in relative safety and comfort compared to the Mojave. She plans to strike out for adventure, probably having no real idea what she's getting herself into. Before she even starts off, though, her best friend (probably since childhood, considering her age) does a heel turn on her and runs off with some rando caravan guard. Then her dog gets mauled to death by geckos. Then she gets mugged by the main characters from South Park.

 

But there's not even a moment where she shows just the slightest hint of wanting to just go the hell home?! She's right at the Mojave Outpost. Right on the border of the NCR. I can't for the life of me figure out why there wasn't any option to get her her stuff back, after which she just buggers off back to Klamath Falls. (What's called just Klamath in-game.)

 

Possibly that's what she does if you tell her that you don't want her traveling with you. What I'm getting at is that that should be her default intention, and that you should have to convince her to travel with you. This is a young woman who thought she'd have a big ol' adventure, and all she's got for it so far is loss. Her default plan should be "Get my stuff back and go home."

 

Or, if it's not, it should be a kind of angry, defiant resistance against that default path. A kind of stubborn refusal to be beaten down by the general horribleness of the wasteland. What it feels like, instead, is... obliviousness. Less "determined survivor" and more like an airheaded bimbo who isn't quite "there" enough to be angry or stubborn.

 

I guess if Willow were examined in a vacuum, it'd be harder to explain; fortunately Willow doesn't exist in a vacuum, and we can very easily contrast her against a character with an extremely similar background but an entirely different end result: Eliza.

 

Like Willow, Eliza comes from a relatively pleasant and trauma-free upbringing; rural Utah, IIRC, in Eliza's case. Her and her dad, a childhood full of reading and learning to shoot. By the time you meet Eliza, however, she's been pretty well hardened by her travels, to the point where she herself is borderline obnoxiously cynical. Eliza, IMO, is basically someguy2000's Russell, with tits.

 

And, then, there's the "Goldilocks" character between Willow and Eliza: Hope Lies. I don't think I'd catch a lot of hate for saying that, of the three, Hope is probably the best written. Contrasted against Willow, the only thing lacking with Hope is that she's not romance-able -- which only stands out to me because Hope is the character with whom a romance option actually makes narrative sense; by the time you've finished her quest, romance is so perfectly organic to the story that it actually makes no sense for that option to not be there. If Eliza is the tomboy-ish little sister (akin to Veronica), and Willow is 'waifu' material, Hope is fully justified wife material, which makes her similar to Cass in that respect.

 

Another excellently written and performed character, one I'd say is equally on par with Hope, is the character of Molerat (aka Winston), an orphaned teenage boy whose backstory intersects with the Player Character's in a genuinely clever way, and who is written as a character who's losing his innocence in the face of the general awfulness of post-war life but who's holding onto it with a kind of stubborn determination as well as in memoriam to his late father. Whereas Willow's constant upbeat attitude comes across as obliviousness, Hope's and Molerat's come across as an expression of resistance against the darkness they've been through.

 

Another point of comparison: Consistency of characterization. Again, we have in Hope Lies and Molerat, two great characters to contrast Willow against in this regard, so let's do that:

 

When you walk down Nipton's main street for the first time with Hope Lies, she has no immediate vocal reaction. Same walk with Molerat, he's horrified and asks what's going on. Same walk with Willow, she's... fretful and asks if you should help the victims. Molerat has no further reaction after leaving Nipton. Hope, if you let Vulpes Inculta walk away, expresses a kind of back-handed disappointment that you didn't stop him by saying that God will judge Inculta and his men in time. Willow, by contrast, remarks that she'll never forget what she saw there. Which strikes me as... kind of weird; of the three reactions -- Hope and Molerat coming across as "shocked speechless", and Willow seeming like a woman who's just seen somebody sprain their ankle -- Willow's the one who has the easiest time talking about having just witnessed what is, basically, a literal war crime.

 

And that's before we even get to the line, "Good job taking down that Nipton destroying Legion scum! Hope you took his stupid hat!" That line is almost meta it's so detached from the character having just walked into a whole town full of dead and dying human beings.

 

I'll leave it at that, before this turns into a novella. lol

[c0ckt4il]

Wow, this is an old, old thread. Apologies to anyone who's upset by me resurrecting it, but I do have some thoughts on the topic, and I'd rather just continue a thread on the topic that's already here rather than cluttering the landscape with a new thread on an old topic.

 

So...

 

I'm going to leave discussion of the mechanics behind Willow off the table here; the original question was about her character. To that point, I'm... conflicted. She strikes me as being an extremely sheltered person. And yet... with the backstory she's given, that's perfectly fitting. This is a young woman (probably early 20s, from the characterization) who grew up deep in the NCR, in relative safety and comfort compared to the Mojave. She plans to strike out for adventure, probably having no real idea what she's getting herself into. Before she even starts off, though, her best friend (probably since childhood, considering her age) does a heel turn on her and runs off with some rando caravan guard. Then her dog gets mauled to death by geckos. Then she gets mugged by the main characters from South Park.

 

But there's not even a moment where she shows just the slightest hint of wanting to just go the hell home?! She's right at the Mojave Outpost. Right on the border of the NCR. I can't for the life of me figure out why there wasn't any option to get her her stuff back, after which she just buggers off back to Klamath Falls. (What's called just Klamath in-game.)

 

Possibly that's what she does if you tell her that you don't want her traveling with you. What I'm getting at is that that should be her default intention, and that you should have to convince her to travel with you. This is a young woman who thought she'd have a big ol' adventure, and all she's got for it so far is loss. Her default plan should be "Get my stuff back and go home."

 

Or, if it's not, it should be a kind of angry, defiant resistance against that default path. A kind of stubborn refusal to be beaten down by the general horribleness of the wasteland. What it feels like, instead, is... obliviousness. Less "determined survivor" and more like an airheaded bimbo who isn't quite "there" enough to be angry or stubborn.

 

I guess if Willow were examined in a vacuum, it'd be harder to explain; fortunately Willow doesn't exist in a vacuum, and we can very easily contrast her against a character with an extremely similar background but an entirely different end result: Eliza.

 

Like Willow, Eliza comes from a relatively pleasant and trauma-free upbringing; rural Utah, IIRC, in Eliza's case. Her and her dad, a childhood full of reading and learning to shoot. By the time you meet Eliza, however, she's been pretty well hardened by her travels, to the point where she herself is borderline obnoxiously cynical. Eliza, IMO, is basically someguy2000's Russell, with tits.

 

And, then, there's the "Goldilocks" character between Willow and Eliza: Hope Lies. I don't think I'd catch a lot of hate for saying that, of the three, Hope is probably the best written. Contrasted against Willow, the only thing lacking with Hope is that she's not romance-able -- which only stands out to me because Hope is the character with whom a romance option actually makes narrative sense; by the time you've finished her quest, romance is so perfectly organic to the story that it actually makes no sense for that option to not be there. If Eliza is the tomboy-ish little sister (akin to Veronica), and Willow is 'waifu' material, Hope is fully justified wife material, which makes her similar to Cass in that respect.

 

Another excellently written and performed character, one I'd say is equally on par with Hope, is the character of Molerat (aka Winston), an orphaned teenage boy whose backstory intersects with the Player Character's in a genuinely clever way, and who is written as a character who's losing his innocence in the face of the general awfulness of post-war life but who's holding onto it with a kind of stubborn determination as well as in memoriam to his late father. Whereas Willow's constant upbeat attitude comes across as obliviousness, Hope's and Molerat's come across as an expression of resistance against the darkness they've been through.

 

Another point of comparison: Consistency of characterization. Again, we have in Hope Lies and Molerat, two great characters to contrast Willow against in this regard, so let's do that:

 

When you walk down Nipton's main street for the first time with Hope Lies, she has no immediate vocal reaction. Same walk with Molerat, he's horrified and asks what's going on. Same walk with Willow, she's... fretful and asks if you should help the victims. Molerat has no further reaction after leaving Nipton. Hope, if you let Vulpes Inculta walk away, expresses a kind of back-handed disappointment that you didn't stop him by saying that God will judge Inculta and his men in time. Willow, by contrast, remarks that she'll never forget what she saw there. Which strikes me as... kind of weird; of the three reactions -- Hope and Molerat coming across as "shocked speechless", and Willow seeming like a woman who's just seen somebody sprain their ankle -- Willow's the one who has the easiest time talking about having just witnessed what is, basically, a literal war crime.

 

And that's before we even get to the line, "Good job taking down that Nipton destroying Legion scum! Hope you took his stupid hat!" That line is almost meta it's so detached from the character having just walked into a whole town full of dead and dying human beings.

 

I'll leave it at that, before this turns into a novella. lol

I'm currently setting up my TTW game and looking for further mods to add. And although you are quite critical of Willow in your post I'm now more interested than before in getting my own perspective on each of the followers you mentioned. So here's my thanks to you for taking your time writing this.