Why do some RPGs only let you have two party members at a time?

[1998]

combinatorial explosion of NPC interactions/reactions with each other
tbf, companions rarely acknowledge each other to begin with even when kept limited to a small number.

[edit]
I strongly suspect this is something that will be handled with AI in the future, generating dialogue based on the NPC & world-state.

Shadowrun: Dragonfall had a good idea of having fully written partners you can interact with, as well as mercenaries which enable an old-school full-party creation style of play.

Dragonfall was just way too much, great example of a game that a higher word count doesn't equal better writing. Too many games especially during those years were proudly showing off their word count, an absolut useless metric.

[Vlajdimir Ermenović]

combinatorial explosion of NPC interactions/reactions with each other
tbf, companions rarely acknowledge each other to begin with even when kept limited to a small number.

[edit]
I strongly suspect this is something that will be handled with AI in the future, generating dialogue based on the NPC & world-state.

Shadowrun: Dragonfall had a good idea of having fully written partners you can interact with, as well as mercenaries which enable an old-school full-party creation style of play.

Dragonfall was just way too much, great example of a game that a higher word count doesn't equal better writing. Too many games especially during those years were proudly showing off their word count, an absolut useless metric.

That doesn't negate the fact that the party system was well-concieved, if not perfectly executed. The writing was good to me, great even. If you want to argue there's not enough gameplay as opposed to talk, that's fair, but it's not deal-breaking blather like BG2.

[Rand]

The worst are the ones that give you something like six party members and you can only bring four.

Or, worse, BG3 or DOS2 where I want one more party member than the game (normally) allows.

[Rand]

Currently playing KotoR. I am reminded of how it feels bad having more party members you like than you can bring in battle. Do these devs keep the party member count low because of the difficulty of designing for many party members? I know that Final Fantasy XII was supposed to have the player leading squadrons, but the game was already rubbing up against the performance limitations of the PS2 (the game runs at reduced resolution and 1/3rd of the screen is chopped off by letterboxing), and had to cut down on the number of character models onscreen, so in the end the player can only have two additional party members + 1 occasional guest. But the number of character models onscreen isn't a limiting factor anymore, so is the limiting factor here the devs' unwillingness to try to balance combat around more party members?

Would be nice if there were more games like Suikoden or Guild Wars 1 that let you have up to six or eight of your favorite party members at once.

Part of the answer:
Kotor was designed for consoles first and they only use this thing for the interface:

So controlling a lot of things at once is tiring to them.
Unlike PC master race mouse and keyboard.

[Rand]

Whether this was intentional or just typical BioWare incompetence I have no clue.

This was when they started catering to the dirty console peasants, so definitely both.

[Orvas Dren]

I'm not sure why people look down on McDonalds employees. They're above a lot of other people. And, largely, they don't have a choice BUT to work at McDonalds...

Being a burger flipper was never meant to be a career. It's a job for high-schoolers or university students, not working adults with families to feed. It's a sign of how ****** up the situation is that they have no other recourse but work there.

What's the career path for the millions of cooks meant to be? Why is a kitchen supposed to be for high-school students? And why would people who can afford university not just work at the university in a way easier job for the same pay?

This was maybe true for like a decade or two at most, but that world has been dead for some time now, and never existed before then

[gerey]

What's the career path for the millions of cooks meant to be?

They're not cooks, they're assembly line workers.

[Orvas Dren]

What's the career path for the millions of cooks meant to be?

They're not cooks, they're assembly line workers.

There is very little difference. Working in the back of house at a typical restaurant is hardly a step up from working the same at Panda Express or Mcdonalds. And if they are assembly line workers, that's exactly the type of job that adults with families work.

[wndrbr]

Kotor was one of the first (or maybe THE first) cinematic rpgs with camera positioned close to your character, with proper lipsyncing and dialogues that looked like cutscenes. I think a game like that would look ridiculous once the amount of characters in your party starts exceeding 4 people.

Not to mention the amount of work the devs will have to do in order to accommodate for the increase in party size - all the environments need to be designed around a huge crowd walking around, all the encounters need to be rebalanced, party banter combinations,etc.

[rusty_shackleford]

Not enough RPGs where you just travel with one party member, or one party member + animal.

[Oyster Sauce]

Not enough RPGs where you just travel with one party member, or one party member + animal.

TLOU 2 is an RPG