Fallout 4/Characters/Companions

Main Game
Like Fallout New Vegas, companions are a lot more than just expendable meat shields and many have their own greater or lesser connections to the story at large.


 * Arc Welding: While they all are met at various points of the game, their own arcs tie into the overall story to some greater or lesser degree, with a few exceptions.
 * Ada from Automatron doesn't really have a greater impact on the larger story, her arc being mostly self contained to the DLC plot, but the abilities she unlocks can have a great impact on certain quests, since the robot building can greatly influence settlement defense and even make certain quests like the Minutemen "Defend the Castle" Quest much easier.
 * Old Longfellow is mostly confined to relevance in Far Harbor and its associated DLC quests, though he does have some commentary for the Commonwealth in general, and his arc intersects with Nick Valentine's own plot arcs, which have implications for the Commonwealth in general.
 * Porter Gage is mainly Nuka-World centric, but his designs and intentions, should the player go full raider boss, will have a big impact on the Commonwealth, and will be one of the very few ways to make an open enemy of Preston Garvey and the Minutemen.
 * Strong has the least impact on the overall plot in general, but does show that the Brotherhood of Steel's blatant racism against his kind is not entirely merited, while at the same time highlighting Super Mutants are largely victims of their creators, which does tie back into the Institute plotline and can affect how the player decides to deal with them.

Dogmeat
Can be met as soon as you step outside of Sanctuary Hills, just down the road at the Red Rocket station. Like his predecessors in the other Fallout games, he's a loyal canine companion who will travel and fight alongside you.


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Codsworth
The Mr. Handy that was intended to be the family butler for the Sole Survivor's family, but who comes to view their family as his own. Can join you as soon as you return from Concord.


 * AI Is a Crapshoot: He laments this about other, simpler robots with more rudimentary programming, though it ranges from sympathy, such as in the case of the broken Takahashi in Diamond City, to annoyance, such as with Deezer in Covenant, who tries to offer him, of all beings, lemonade.
 * American Robot: Is quite proud of his US producer, General Atomics, even makes snide remarks about communists in certain areas.
 * Badass: Downplayed. He admits he's no Mr. Gutsy, but will fight alongside you anyway, and while useful in the early game, other companions quickly outclass him him without the Automatron DLC.
 * Badass Automaton: With the Automatron DLC, you can upgrade Codsworth to being a robotic One Man Army.
 * Moral Myopia: While his morality is easily mistaken for that of a Lawful Good type, Codsworth has some odd deviations from this norm:
 * Unlike most other companions with a similar code of morals, he's rather indifferent to cannibalism, though since Codsworth doesn't consider this a crime to a living, innocent being, he doesn't view it with anything other dispassionate indifference.
 * While he approves of helping organizations like the Minutemen, he has reservations about the Brotherhood of Steel, which makes sense since the Minutemen define their role and selfless servants of others like Codsworth himself, while the Brotherhood defines itself as guardians who enforce their rules on others.
 * Robot Buddy: Quite proud of this status, though he considers himself just as much a friend and ally to the player as those who look humanoid.
 * Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence: Fairly high up on the scale, rather surprisingly since he's a mass produced model of robot easily purchasable before the Great War, but it's implied he may have learned to grow beyond his limited programming in the interval since the prologue. He still adheres to many basic principles of his stock programming, and thus even at zero trust he will not turn hostile and attack the Sole Survivor, but he will become disgusted enough with them he refuses to actively aid them in combat.

Preston Garvey

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Deacon

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Piper Wright

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Cait

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Paladin Danse

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Curie

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John Hancock

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Nick Valentine

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Robert Joseph MacCready

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X6-88

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Strong
Strong is a Super Mutant who can be rescued from the Trinity Tower, where he was almost killed by his fellow mutants for basically being somewhat more intelligent than the rest them and coming to the conclusion he could be slightly more than a murderous monster.


 * Token Heroic Orc: To a degree. He has not abandoned being willing to engage in cannibalism or murder, and still enjoys raising hell in general, but this is tempered by a rudimentary morality based on similar species having an imperative to look out for one another, not to mention an odd fascination with those who use clever speech and conversational guile as opposed to constant violence.

Ada

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Automatrons

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Old Longfellow

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Porter Gage

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