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In cultures with familiars, folklore, and mythology, shamans, witches, and other spell casters would go out into the wilderness on quests to encounter spirits that would take various forms, sometimes animals, or possess animals. Some were devils, demons, nature spirits, or ghosts that took forms to avoid attracting attention. These familiars, familiar spirits, or weyekin would become a source of power for the spell casters or guide them on obtaining power and teach them how to cast spells.
In first addition Pathfinder, most familiars had all of the normal animal abilities, and most of them could communicate empathically with their masters, receive any spell that a spell caster could cast on themselves, deliver touch spells at 3rd level, speak with their masters at 5th, speak with animals of it's kind at 7th, get spell resistance at 11th, and be scry'd on at 13th. They had starting intelligences of 6 that progressed to 15, and could have knowledge, and spell crafting skills. They granted an additional ability based on species, and had improved evasion too. Familiars with the Sage archetype could be vastly intelligent with a large number of skill ranks to allow then to guide and advise their "masters". Witches got all of their spells from their familiars.
In the Playtest, all familiars can communicate empathically. If the familiar is a raven or owl that flies faster than a human can move it gets no additional magical related abilities. If it's a rodent or cat with scent that can climb, it gets no additional magical related abilities. If it's a frog that can swim or an animal with just scent like a dog, it maybe gets dark vision, maybe can speak one language that it's master can cast, maybe grants a low level spell, or maybe can deliver a touch spell, but only one of those magic related abilities. Familiars in the Playtest have little in the way of mental traits, no knowledge skills. They can have one or two minor supernatural qualities, but that makes them lose the natural abilities that their animal counterparts would have. Familiars aren't familiars, instead they are basically just pets with a little empathic communication, and they're significantly more diminished than they were in first edition, which is the opposite of the direction to go to fit the folklore equivalent and a significant disappointment to players that loved them as more useful partners in first edition.
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I would like to concur with this. I've had a character concept for a long time, based on the first JRPG I ever played. It's essentially a magic swordsman with a talking, flying cat familiar. When I learned from the teaser that I can have a flying cat familiar, I was over the moon. Then I learned about how multi-classing worked. I can make DragonMaster Alex, I thought. But even for roleplaying... I just... can't justify taking the familiar. A flying, talking cat accomplishes absolutely nothing other than flying and talking. Maybe with sorcerer dedication rather than wizard (and by taking the expanded familiar feat) but they need... more. At least 3 choices at base, and expand the Master traits so that they are... useful.
I would like to concur with this. I've had a character concept for a long time, based on the first JRPG I ever played. It's essentially a magic swordsman with a talking, flying cat familiar. When I learned from the teaser that I can have a flying cat familiar, I was over the moon. Then I learned about how multi-classing worked. I can make DragonMaster Alex, I thought. But even for roleplaying... I just... can't justify taking the familiar. A flying, talking cat accomplishes absolutely nothing other than flying and talking. Maybe with sorcerer dedication rather than wizard (and by taking the expanded familiar feat) but they need... more. At least 3 choices at base, and expand the Master traits so that they are... useful.
You can play a gnome. Or take the adopted ancestry general feat to get access to gnome ancestry feats. You don't need to multiclass necessarily to get a familiar.
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My PF1 tengu witch has a raven familiar. I like the idea that they blabber back and forth at each other in birdspeech regularly and the raven can Aid Another on virtually all tasks (well, ok, not everything reliably! Raven's not that good, but it comes in handy for Appraise and Perception and that's on top of the familiar benefits!)
But yeah, familiars and animal companions in PF2 barely qualify as "alive."