If I recall, in Mariposa there are a bunch of security screens that deal damage. Very, very easy for dogmeat to kill itself on one of them if they survive that long, hence the shoutout.
(I think there was another joking fate of dogmeat getting killed by friendly fire from Ian?)
As to the topic at hand... I picked up Inquisitor: Martyr after some input from Nenjin on these forums, and am finding it interesting-but-flawed as advertised. That said, the pseudo-cover system, slower pace, and more focused choices in skills really gel. Tried playing some Grim Dawn afterwards and found it comparatively bland.
The expansion DLC adds a pet class, the tech adept, that while interesting is also a) rather overpowered but b) not really engaging enough. Classes in the game generally get up to 6 skills - 4 from their equipped weapon(s), 1 from their belt (which has a set number of charges, with periodic supply caches on a map), and 1 from their armor.
Generally, that's pretty engaging - weapon choice is a heck of a lot more meaningful than most ARPGs, as the majority of one's skills are actually from the weapon (with differing classes having different sets available). The belt slot seems to have the same options across all classes, generally serving shoring up a weakspot or providing an 'oh crud' button, and the armor slot is class-unique.
For the tech adept, though, their weapons (of which they have a much more restricted set than other classes for some reason) only have 1-2 skills out of 4 - the other two are slots for their pets. Similarly, the belt and armor slots can also be pet slots instead (and the other armor skills are not very interesting, being a heal and a shield). So of your 6 skills you can have up to 5 be summon slots or a max of 3 be combat skills.
Thus, you can end up playing an ARPG where your mass of pets is doing pretty much all the fighting, with you kind of like the commissar on the top of the tank.
They did an excellent job with the pets, at least, as you can freely pick between about 6 of them, each have different weapon choices and equipment slots (and drops, of course), etc. And they really do a great job at slaughtering the hordes of foes. You the player just kind of end up a bit superfluous, hah. Playing as the space marine is more engaging.
On another note, I found myself being quite grateful they just dumped the whole 'open world' thing that's been so popular since Diablo 2 in ARPGs and instead stuck to a hub and individual combat maps. The genre is kind of going that direction already, I think, and doing it here both makes sense thematically and works well functionally.