I understand it's alpha and I assume the problem will be solved along with the addition of party dialogs and love and hate system. But just in case it won't I wanted to voice my concerns. And the problem is: for me, after recruiting them companions feel like mindless bots.

First let me draw attention to this topic at steam forums [url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/435150/discussions/0/343786746007215501/]https://steamcommunity.com/app/435150/discussions/0/343786746007215501/[/url] that nicely summarizes my concerns. In short the poster there asks why companions don't object to player's actions and interfere with dialogs even when they logically should.

In addition to examples the poster on steam gives let me add a couple of my own. Let's say I'm playing as Sebille and go for her origin quest. I'm torturing poor Stingtail asking about Master. I got the information I needed and am about to cut his throat. The Red Prince stays right there and does... nothing. The logical thing for him would be to try to stop me from killing a fellow lizard. Or at the very least voice his objections. But while I'm not controlling him, he does absolutely nothing and feels like my puppet.

Now let's take Lothe's story. At one point she is posessed by demon and attacks Sahelia. Ifan, Red Prince and Sebille are staying there. Their companion they just met an hour ago suddenly went insane and now tryes to slaughter a whole cavern of people. What do they do? Readily join the fight on her side. That's some amazing bond of friendship with somebody you only know for a couple of hours.

There are probably more examples but at that point I was so annoyed I immidiately closed the game. And that's my problem with companions so far. They have amazing personalities but as soon as they join they'll only say things I want them to say and do things I want them to do. Sure, I can talk to NPCs with them but that still would be me controling companions actions.

I can assure you that you have nothing to worry about. The game is still very much an alpha, as such most of the companion/party dialog has not been implemented yet. Try to chat with one of your companions and you will see a message from the developers.

I'm... pretty sure that's a limit of the alpha build alone.

Like when you have some controversial topic being discussed during a quest and the game let you pick the reaction for each of your companions: I always guessed that at some point during development you won't be able to and every companion will have a fixed opinion about that quest.

Yes, I also think something will be added later in development. But I am worried the developers might not take it far enough. I want my companions not simply disagreeing. I want them to leave or even turn on me if they think I crossed the line.

For example, if my character kills anything she meets, slaughtering entire cities, it'd take a very special kind of personality to continue travelling with her. No sane person would want to help a murdering psychopath without a very serious reason. And escaping Fort Joy is not such a reason.

Or if my character suddenly attacks a friend of my companion, said companion shouldn't happily drow his weapon to help me. Instead he should attack me to save his friend.

While I'm sure some interactions will be added later in development, I'm not so sure Larian will add something like what I described above.

This reminds me of Baldur's Gate Reputation system, where every companion had a tolerance level for how good or bad your reputation was.

I admit I would like some subset of rules for companions for things they don't approve of, but I'm not sure how limiting this would be, considering that Baldur's Gate games had lots of companion characters so losing a few didn't matter AS much.

True. But I think the player has to pay something if she's willing to kill everything on sight. After all there is this new perk for solo playthrough you can take at level 8 if all companions leave.

Also so far all possible party members are not very nice so their level of tolerance can be pretty high. Sebille would probably approve slaughtering cities as long as it's lizard cities. The Red Prince wouldn't care as long as it's not lizards.

But for every companion there are things they'd never do and never approve judging by their personalities. So they shouldn't do or approve it in the game as well. They'll be more believable that way.