The Elder Scrolls Online team is answering community questions all about companions. Design details, the possibility of returning companions, and if we’ll potentially see vampires or werewolves are among the answers.
The responses are from several devs, each with different perspectives on the process. On Necrom’s Argonian companion Sharp-as-Night, the community question is lore heavy, which fits right in with a long-running RPG series like The Elder Scrolls. “What tribe is Sharp originally from? I also would like to know his Jel name. Did he even have one in the first place?”
Writer-designer Juli Comstock says that his tribe and Jel name were initially planned details, but were cut from the final questline. This was done for story reasons and for a practical purpose as well. “I imagine discovering these things would carry some life-altering gravitas for the character, and Sharp needs a reason after his questline to stick around as a summonable companion,” Comstock says.
Companion quirks and other notable details that they will react to are also something they like to add, as long as they fit in the story.
The ESO team has been asked numerous times if there might be the potential for future vampire or werewolf companions. This time is no different, as the team has addressed these sorts of questions before, in a similar way: it’s not off the table. That said, they also have “no plans to increase the companion release rate at this time. (They take a lot of work from many talented developers, and we want to make sure we’re taking the time to get them as good as they can possibly be”. These are reasons why there are only a select number of companions and they have been released with paid content.
Another question that has been addressed before, but also comes up a lot if whether there are possibilities to see older companions return with some new content. This one holds a little more promise for those who’ve been asking for this:
“I can’t go into too much detail regarding our future plans, but I can say that we have big ideas on how we can expand the Companion system in the future, and those ideas certainly involve revisiting Bastian and Mirri!,” Zone Lead Tom Murphy says.
Read the full companions Q&A at The Elder Scrolls Online
