#VG avoids it by basically going: Yeah you need those perspectives showed to you and you need to consider them all and you need to be aware.

[heliomanteia]

People talked about how delightful the active lore delivery is in VG but there's one aspect of that conversation that I don't see pointed out much: it's not just more engaging to get lore drops "on the go", it also makes sense from the point of plot relevance.

My first "well done!" is that companion missions come in slowly. You recruit them in the order that they are needed and it's a logical one. You're urged to look for newer and newer sources of help as you encounter newer aspects of the problem you're dealing with. You're literally on a trail -> find a detective. Something needs killing -> get an assassin. You're dealing with ancient elven magic -> look for a Dalish artifact expert. There's some new fucked up blight -> recruit a Grey Warden. Dragons are an active danger -> find a dragon hunter. Your entire mission has to deal with the Veil and the Fade -> hire a Fade expert. They make sense.

If you ignore your companions and their missions, you lose a lot of important (personally or overall) lore drops and you risk losing all of your companions and your MC in the final battle. You come into the plot blind and run through it in a hasty way -> you are not going to get a ton of perspective and you are going to end up with less than you could have. And those perspectives matter because each companion is a side of a multi-facet prism that is the game's conflict.

This is an aspect of companion importance to the plot that I don't feel is appreciated enough: they aren't just narratively tied into a lovely tapestry. They all offer perspectives and value that will affect your degree of familiarity with the lore if you choose to ignore it; and have a consequence of you potentially losing that companion or more.