One of the narrative issues that happen rather frequently in Fallout is something that I personally have dubbed the “raider problem.” It’s the frequent use of named factions that often function as little more than standard raiders in gameplay.
0:00 Intro
0:28 Defining
2:17 Examples
6:43 Are gameplay raiders a problem
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Also, if you're curious, the thumbnail is a little different from in the video and the final product outside. I didn't realize the raider models wrists could move when the IK rig was removed until AFTER the video was uploaded to the early-viewing channel members.
Fixed that but didn't really feel like re-rendering and uploading a new video. So that's why it's different.
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7:30
that's one thing that didn't port well to the Bethesda fallout from the originals. The original game Supermutants were tough. hit hard. Would basically murder a low level player. They are not nearly that hard in the later games.
Personally, my biggest issue with Raiders, and why I largely don't mind the ones in New Vegas, is when it just feels like they were put in a spot so there could be a fight there rather than having any in-universe reason to be there. It's a thing that happens a lot in poorly written D&D campaigns, for example. You're exploring an ancient dungeon that hasn't been disturbed in a millennia, and on the third floor you find a group of unnamed goblins who attack instantly and then die. What were they doing down there? No one knows. How long had they been there? Unimportant. New Vegas does a pretty good job of avoiding this sort of situation, because even though the gangs like the Jackals and Vipers have approximately zero speaking roles, their interactions with the player make sense. They're set up on various roads, typically in ambush positions, sometimes even having gunfights with other gangs. The Vipers in particular have several spots that are actually kind of ingenious little tricks and traps, that can be really lethal on a first playthrough. Even without ever interacting with the player outside of attacking them, the gangs have personality. However it feels like in a lot of Bethesda titles Raiders are just kind of camped out randomly everywhere on the map. It doesn't feel like they're waiting around areas of particular strategic importance, you've gotta wonder how many merchants they actually catch. And the fact that they're all just named "Raider" makes it feel even lazier.
Ironically, I think fallout 4 actually had a good reason for the raiders to be around. We all know the old “settlement is under attack” joke, but what if raiders were mostly few and far between until we started building settlements? Word of thriving settlements with food and resources would be the impetus for raiders to start moving in and become a more frequent occurrence.
The never ending supply of them could be justified as foreign groups moving into the region, while the gradual progression in difficulty is explained as the weaker groups being wiped out, or driven off, leaving their territory to be claimed by more powerful ones. The initial wave of raiders would be weak opportunists, but once word gets out that the commonwealth might not be as easy a target as it seems, only more seasoned or experienced marauders would be willing to take a shot at it.
The khans in fo1 have what? 1 quest involved with them that you can either skip or head straight to their camp without being given the quest and kill them. They dont truly the world. The great khans in nv you can just go straight to yes man and say we're are ignoring the khans and now outside of the opening scene you never see a khan your entire playthrough. Both groups are either raiders by a different name or 'optional' content
Theyre not made for plot, theyre for the grind. They advance the experience and wealth of the player. Not everything needs a story, and not everything matters.
I once saw an interesting perspective on people who are considered unhinged or violent. People's interactions with other people are for the most part, are overwhelming benign when you look at the big picture. Even people who are considered to be violent, aren't acting on those tendencies in the majority of their interactions because they usually have at least a basic idea for social structures. Hell, not even a lot of animals are mindless killing machines. Because there will always be consequences for your actions, regardless of if its law or anarchy.
could've been awesome if they made some questline with talon company or the regulators (guys who try to kill you if you have bad karma). would be somethingl ike hunting down some NPCs that are considered 'good' or 'bad', start clashing with another group that is a complete opposite to the one you joined up etc.
There is a point to be made, I think, that despite all those 'gameplay raiders' don't do much to further the plot and are pretty replacable if you only consider the direct story you play, they add to the overall experience of the game.
Sure, you could replace all those different groups with one singular group of enemies – but that would be bland.
Also – while not explored in deep in the scope of the game you play, every single faction, regardless of how insignificant they are in the actual game, add to the lore and the complexity of the world surrounding the area in which you play.
Talon Company and Gunners are just acting like random hostiles most of the time – but they add the feeling that there's a greater world outside of what you experience as a player right now. Somebody from the outside put a hit on you. Why? How? It feels like a story that's not told, but does exist.
I don't think every element of a game needs to strictly further the plot – games differ in this regard from books. What in written stories – or movies can feel dragged out, unneccesary encumbering the relatively restricted space of a book or runtime of a movie, fits perfect in integrating the game you play at the moment with the lore and the greater surrounding world. Sometimes it's just nice to learn about things that also exist, even if you can't really interact with it right now.
I really don’t mind gameplay raiders if it makes sense. In fo3 you could pass them off as being psychopaths doped up on chems which explains why they’re so violent. Not so much fallout 4, where gunners are violent for the sake of being violent. There has to be some sort of context that justifies their existence for it to be passable.
Bethesda needs to fire John Gruden
I say this as I have said all along the Gunners should have been the main antagonistic force for fallout 4 after a certain point and super mutants shouldn't have been so prominent also
So, yeah I never noticed how Fallout kind of underuses the named factions. Because as a game set in the apocalypse, it does only make sense to have he place crawling with bandits and unsavory characters. Postapocalyptic worlds are practically known for being brutal and difficult to survive in. But the Talon company and the super mutants after FO3 and the other gangs you named did seem a little pointless in the grand scheme of things.
Raiders are raider so "good" players don't feel bad for gunning down survivor groups.
I mean you just walk into their homes and start taking stuff and shooting them.
"raiders" imo are just hostile npcs that any alignment MC can murder/kill without alignment repercussions
I think that one of the reasons that I love new Vegas is that every raider faction feels like the raiders from nukaworld but on a smaller scale. Fighting the powder gangers, the viper, the fiends, the jackals they all encompass the "raider" in a sense but just having that distinction is important. In a way I feel like that nuka world made the raiders even more pathetic because they even say that the basic raider has no goal. That fact alone annoys the shit out of me because how can these idiots set up turrets, have power armor, make fully functional weapons and just do nothing with it? At least the raiders in 3 just salvaged all their shit but these guys legit made so much stuff that it makes no sense that they are so idiotic.
This should be called the Raider "Problem". This isn't a real issue. not everything has to be explicitly tied to the main plot to be valuable in a game. Variety is the purpose. Faction names adds to immersion even to minor factions. I disagree with every criticism in this video.
A big problem i have with raiders is sheer population. It makes 0 sense there would be THAT many raiders in comparison to the population of towns (their prey) and where is the population growth coming from? Are there literally stables of enslaved woman popping out raider babies somewhere? I can’t imagine child care is high on any of their minds. Do they come from towns? Seriously it makes as much sense as having 14 wolves for every 1 deer in the forest.
Thats part of the reason I love fnv, the fiends etc all make sense why they exsist and are there.
Blasting raiders is 90% of fallout to me.
The Raider problem could easily be solved by having them as a different class of ghouls.
Some that still have a spark of intelligence, but are now just the equivalent of cavemen. They understand they can wear "pelts" (armor) to make their hide tougher. Work as hunter gatherers, so are always around scrounging for food, and see everything as a zero-sum game (i.e. they either eat the food they find or someone else who has come into their territory is going to eat it), and that would then explain how they could always be hostile.
One aspect of this I was noticing in Fallout 4 is that the raider bosses often have terminals with journals commenting on squabbles with other raider gangs, dealings with traders, etc. They sometimes even take note of how the player character has eliminated another raider boss. If the player character has already killed Tower Tom before visiting Corvega, Jared's terminal will include a journal entry noting this. So there's a very minor element that has raider gangs responding to the way you change the world as you play, but they never bothered to have them actually behave any differently. Presumably it was deemed too resource-intensive or something, but really even a few minor behavioral/dialogue differences would have helped. The raider boss that sees the early player character with a vault suit, scavenged gear, and perhaps Dogmeat could reasonably be taunting the player character and boasting about what is about to happen to your corpse or whatever. But after you've already executed every other raider boss in the Commonwealth and you stride in with your fancy customized rifle, freshly-painted power armor, followed by your sentry robot that is spewing gatling lasers, that same raider boss should not be saying those same lines.
There’s simply no need to have a plot or narrative behind the raiders bc they are thugs, thugs are everywhere even in a world with laws. A world without laws will be infested by thug/raiders. Brain dead take bro
Raiders exist as a means for "good" playthrough characters to blow off steam on non essential human NPCs without feeling bad for it and I appreciate that. They're pretty fun to just slaughter for no reason.
Now as I think about it, I see molerat problem…