i've seen you answer asks about what du!drow thinks of the companions and what led him to kill lae'zel/abandon halsin, but i'm actually curious on what You think of each of the companions! feel free to ignore this if you've already answered this question!!
There IS probably an answer to this ask out there somewhere, in the depths of my blog... But If I can't find it then I doubt anyone else can, LOL. Either way it's possible that my thoughts have changed since, so we can consider this an update.
Lae'zel: Unpopular (or perhaps just not-so-often-mentioned) opinion, but I think Devora is an absolute highlight of this game with her voice-work for Lae'zel. I feel like I can see everyone else's actors in their booths doing their character's voices - but with her, I cannot. She's just Lae'zel through and through, no magic here.
While her story isn't super interesting to me (Githyanki lore, at least as represented in the game, feels a little one-note) I also wish that her transition from Hardened Githyanki to Open Minded Vlakkith rebel had been a little more gradual - but the way that she interacts with other characters and the world around her is phenomenal. And, again, Devora should get MUCH more recognition for her work here, she made the whole difference between a simple, trope-y companion and a fully fleshed out, memorable character.
Shadowheart: I love Shadowheart because she is such a bitch, and unlike Lae'zel, she does it on purpose. She is very difficult to like for her personality at first and that makes the gradual shift of it (not entirely - but just the bits that she didn't have a good grasp of to begin with) so satisfying. She doesn't only evolve throughout the course of the game, she actually becomes a person in the first place with her own set of troubled beliefs, corny jokes, insecurities and complex feelings - a total swap from my initial impression of her as the bland goth-seductress romance option injected into the game for the sake of holding the attention of a certain subsect of the audience. I love this girl. I have never been able to romance her because I feel like she's my bestie, LOL.
Gale: Gale is probably the funniest character in this game and for that alone I always keep him around - but story-wise and personality-wise he also has SO much more potential. I really like to think of him as a very theatrical type who has, over time, developed a difficulty with actually immersing himself in the real world and operating like a real person should. Everything he says feels rehearsed until he inevitably stumbles and bashfully slinks away. Every opportunity he has to take absolute control over a situation with magic, he does. He lets people step all over him until they toe a particular line, and then he loses all composure so suddenly that it's jarring - I LOVE all the intricacies of his character and I fully believe that this ugly side of his insecurity flip-siding with self-aggrandizement was fully intended by the writers - and perhaps, had they been given more time, we would have seen Gale's grays and darks explored much more in-depth - that said, I am satisfied with the current state of affairs, and being able to have a peek at them every once in a while.
Wyll: Sadly, I do not have much positive to say about Wyll. I am well aware that his character went through last-minute rewrites and even a full voice actor change, and unfortunately, it shows! Not in the voice acting (Solomon did a wonderful job and his voice really suits the character) but in his very lackluster story and especially the romance. Wyll seems to have been intended as a character who fancied himself a hero and made something of a fantasy for himself, only to eventually have the reality of his situation and the true consequences of his actions be proven too heavy a burden for him to maintain the facade... Except that he sort of comes out of the gate having already had that realization.
He is ALWAYS modest and in control of himself and his emotions, He is NEVER angry, or unaware, or even meaningfully sad, he accepts every truth lashed out at him without struggle and catches every lie with incomparable wit. He doesn't ever even really seem tempted by power or fame despite what he says about himself, and in the end he doesn't even make some of his most meaningful story-choices himself. Wyll was, unfortunately, done a gigantic disservice for what could have been otherwise a really interesting dissection of the typical "self-insert hero" trope so commonly found in fantasy - someone who is utterly convinced he is the main character, and slowly learns that to not be case... Alas. Lets just say that I think it is Larian's duty to bring us a well-written black character in Divinity now, because this was a very, very ugly look for them.
[I will do the rest of the cast later in a reblog! This is taking longer than I thought it would 😂]
