Breakfast Topic: How do you view your followers?
Greatmother Geyah is a total name-dropper. Every time I run into her, she asks how her son is doing, and just has to point out that she's talking about Durotan, just in case I wasn't aware that she was the mother of the Frostwolf chieftain. Meanwhile, Phylarch the Evergreen is some sort of meditative genius, as he spends a lot of his time sitting in midair, when he isn't making my other followers cry. Botani, right? Meanwhile, I'm not sure about Aeda Brightdawn, because despite her name she's a warlock and she's taken to speaking in demonic when she thinks I'm not paying attention.
I tend to think of my followers like people, because the AI for them is pretty good -- they notice when I walk by, they'll make a comment in my direction every now and again, and they even talk to each other, sometimes with disastrous results. Milhouse Manastorm spends a lot of his time laughing at my peons and making them feel bad, for example. It's interesting because it's so lively, but it's also interesting because I've noticed other people doing the same thing -- they'll send certain followers on missions together because, in their heads, those two followers totally belong together. They'd hit it off. They'd be best friends.
This humanizing of what is essentially a decent AI system and a bit of random dialogue is kind of fascinating to me. I like making up stories, I like writing stories, so making up personalities and stories in my head is pretty much right up my alley. I'm kind of delighted to see that I'm not the only one that does so -- and I'm also curious, just how widespread is this habit? Do you guys view your followers with different personalities? Do you make up stories for them? Do you treat them any differently for how they act in your garrison? Do you tend to group the same followers together? Or are they all just mechanical minions to be sent out at your whim?
