Originally Posted by Icelyn
Originally Posted by Gray Ghost
It really seems to me like making Halsin and Minthara companionos was a mistake on Larian's part. Most people seem unhappy, they have to spend so much time and money constantly fixing and adding things to make the inclusion work, and it just makes other stuff confusing and complicated in turn. I think Larian would have been better off not listening to fans on this one. Clearly taking characters who aren't meant to be companions and making them companions is just a bad idea. Hopefully they've learned their lesson and don't repeat this mistake with any of the other characters people are asking for.
I disagree with this! For me the issue isn’t that they added him, but how they did it. They could easily have added him in a way that I would have loved!

One issue I had in EA was that I couldn’t find any male love interests I liked because the male love interests were either evil (Astarion) or involved with other women (Gale and Wyll). Adding Halsin as a love interest would have been perfect because he is good and wasn’t involved with anyone in EA! But then they made it required that your character agree to be involved with other people to date him! frown If they had written a sweet romance with only him, I would have been very happy! I still hope they will add a path like this for him!

This is personal taste, but one of the biggest issues I had from EA is that I had a hard time connecting with the companions, but I loved Halsin! To me the game is lacking in companions who are good. I hope in their next game they will make a larger variety of companions from the start and not just focus on the evil or neutral companions (even if they can change later). Having Halsin available earlier as a companion would help with this for me, although it would take more work recording voice lines.

I agree with Icelyn. Im not sure about Minthara but Halsin could have been added in much more smoothly, especially had they kept in some the cut content for him and treated his romance a little more like the rest. Which is what people were asking for in the first place.

His lack of banter and dialogue may or may not be a hinderance if he becomes playable after the tiefling party as he should be. I kind of like the idea of there being a slow burn, a lomging slowly building up that cant be acted upon until the problem at hand is taken care of, like what was being hinted at in act 2. If they has spread that out a little inbetween the party and the end of act 2 it would have been a decent progression in the relationship and his character. The issue is it all comes to a head at once in act 2 after the portal quest. And much of his act 2 dialogue can easily be switched around to act 1 and would still make sense. Ive said in other posts, why do we only learn about things like his whittling and love for honey AFTER getting Thaniel? Those are very simple things he has no reason to keep to himself for so long. He has been traveling with us for so long at that point its wierd. It was like I was being dumped with info, getting to know him all at once when it could easily have been sprinkled in. But he has at least one banter flag for the eagle fight in the mountain pass. So that was either added, or they had originally planned to make him playable that early at some point but decided not to for some reason.