Do they just sort of appear randomly through out the game, or are your NPC Buddies scripted events with in the singleplayer story?

Seems to depend. One guy was just standing around in the bar, another I saved from a closet in the slaughterhouse. My best buddy I found in my first mission. Can't remember how I found my second best.

I met Singh during the first mission when I broke him out of a Prison so-to-speak, then I met Barren in the Bar, whom was just standing there, so I am betting that I might have to start walking about the huge African Sahara to find most of them... dam thats eerie.

Eventually you get a quest that gives you an additional buddy, it is mostly the same quest as the original one.

The buddies, as far as I can tell (Only 20 hours into the game) - Seem to appear in certain points. So the first Act you will only have 2 buddies. Ive discovered a few more buddies through-out the game and it looks as if you can only have 2 buddies in each area. They are semi-scripted in the way that you will meet them when the game wants you to, however you can choose to help them or just ignore them. In the end its your choice.

Depends. Some main missions will give them to you, but on Act 1 I found one guy randomly while driving offroad - he was injured and needed my assistance.

There are 4 possible buddy rescue locations when you start, one of them is where you'll be taken after you collapse while escaping from the town, another is where you'll be sent to rescue a person for your first quest - that person will become your best buddy. You can then find and rescue 2 more buddies in the other 2 locations. The 4 locations are the Slaughterhouse, Fresh Fish, Cockfights, and Lumber. They're all close to the village in the middle of the map. I had 5 buddies in the first "world" - the 3 that I rescued from those locations, and then another 2 who just showed up in mike's bar by themselves. I'm pretty sure you're only supposed to get 5 in the first "world", you get more when you go south to the 2nd world halfway through the game.

Note that if you don't rescue the buddies from the other 2 locations yourself, you'll be told to do so by the doorman at one of the faction headquarters in Pala, so you can wait till they give you the quest before doing it if you want.

There are 12 buddies overall. All the locations stay the same but buddies are spread out randomly. You can get 6 in both territories, and in the northern territory  the sixth buddy can be located in the top middle part of the map, in a small valley. Still unsure where the sixth buddy in the southern territory is though

all I know about them is that they totally lack emotion and their ridiculous animations coupled with terrible voice acting just make 'em unlikable


Spoiler
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also they betray you at the end of the game ,     Shoot

they may be lame but they could realy help you if you travled far and havent saved your game.... cause its really sucks when you die and you have to walk and drive to go back to same plae again

Well all I know is that I allready had to let 8 of my buddies die.

Yes yes, I'm a lousy friend to have :P

No seriously Spoilers

They got killed in an ambush on the bar , then I needed 2 go to the south region, just like everbody else I guess, but were you able to save any of em ?

I have found buddies around the map, one of them at a plane crash, i think it depends on which character you choose. differant characters start with differant buddies??

Yeh, I've finnished the game and now im just redoing it to get all the acheivements (platinum trophy here i come )....but its impossible to save any of your mates in bar ( the first territory) they are all programmed to "go missing".

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Kinda a Spoiler:
im not going to say they died....because its not true....