I do think there could have been more depth added, but let's be clear.

In the case of the guy at the grave, I for one have never heard that raider utter a word, so it's an assumption that they're not just coming down from a PsychoJet rush. I mean there's a shallow depression where they might have buried someone, but we really don't know for sure.

In the case of the Corvega crew, we have it on good information, and journal entries by some of the raiders themselves, that they are a band of killers, thieves, and extortionists. Yes, we are walking into their squatters den (It wasn't locked when I tried the door ) but they invited me with their killing and extortion spree. (R.S.V.P. Bring Your Own Bullets )

So you heard one talking about their little sister, ummkay, but maybe they just failed to mention how they also got her strung out on Jet and sold her to the local brothel! I mean, lot's of imagination is being used here to assume that what they are saying is just a small part of who they are and that the parts we don't know are probably not parts best described by showing a very short clip from the movie Hostel.

So, until I do get the chance to have a long chat with one of them and find out that in fact they could end up living out the rest of their lives manning a guard post at one of the many settlements I have helped established, than they will be dealt with like all those that choose to wear the social badge of Raider, with swift and mighty Justice.

I sometimes wonder if Cait could have ended up as a Raider rather than my girlfriend if she had ended up in the wrong company. Then I wonder if that Raider chick who just surrendered to me could have ended up like as my girlfriend if she had met the right company. Then I get upset that I can never holster my gun again .....

He is kneeling in prayer holding a shovel. I idled there and Curie also knelt in prayer.

My only character so far is a pistol/sniper/sneak build, so that makes for an interesting dynamic when I don't necessarily have a "they shot first" excuse to kill them. Unless there are bodies strung about everywhere (not always the case), I have no justification for killing raiders from a distance. I have no justification for sneaking into their "bases" and killing them unprovoked. If I did sneak into their camp and they caught me and started shooting, would they be in the wrong in this world? If a heavily armed, armored person were to sneak into anyone's camp in an apocalyptic scenario, you'd be justified in shooting them first. There are a lot of situations where my character just avoids these areas if possible, both to avoid a large firefight if they are outwardly hostile, and possibly to avoid killing innocent people. We have a meta perspective as players that certain characters are hostile, but the character wouldn't always know.

Like I said earlier, walk up to them with your weapon holstered and see how well a conversation goes...

I'm the richest, most badassed person in the commonwealth. I have three girlfriends, two dogs and several settlements with at least 100 settlers under my protection. Raiders are a threat to my way of life. Raiders die.

they dont attack me i dont attack them

they attack me....i claw their face off and eat them

A few weeks of Fallout 4 inspired me to pick Skyrim back up. Enjoying how much bandits actually warn and threaten me to chase me out before actually picking up arms against me.

Ewww, picking up http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/d/d9/Fo4tommylonegan.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/270?cb=20151114074411 sloppy seconds!?

You know what I do? I pull a "Mass Effect"

I live by the Code of the Asari Justicar.

And the Code is Absolute.

You're only reinforcing his point about us as players having a meta perspective that the character couldn't possibly have. If there's a raider settlement with no bodies strung up outside it, all you would realistically know from a distance is that there are armed people inside.

Right, so if I am sent to "Investigate" some raiders, I can walk up to them in the most non hostile fashion the game allows (with my weapon holstered) and try to talk to them. Invariably they just start shooting. No meta perspective there. Simply good manners.

Nothing meta, no player-only knowledge that the characters lack. The game presents various cultural norms of the 23rd Century: bands of criminals who kill, kidnap, and steal are still seen as unacceptable; pointing a gun at people who wander into your settlement/home is seen as acceptable. If "raider" behavior was something meta, then it'd be acceptable for the Abernathies to open fire on you, rather than hold you up and ascertain your intentions, for instance. As it is, we're given tons of examples of individuals and social groups who respond to player intrusion in different ways. Universally, "open fire immediately" is seen as something akin to being a feral ghoul.

I love raiders, they taste very good in my belly, honestly they were the ones who made me hungry in the first place by shooting me so its their own fault they won't have an open casket without seeing bite marks on their faces.


I know their parents said "you will never make something of yourself" but look at them now, they made themselves into food for me.

Yup, they'll gun you down. A shame really. It would make all the difference in the world if they did like in Skyrim and just yelled at you to leave and only attacked if you got much closer.


My only point was that, for the play style that loolooapples is running, it's harder to justify he killings from his character's POV, because he sneaks everywhere and doesn't prompt the raiders to attack him first, meaning he can't know that they're automatically violent with the way he's currently playing.

It would depend. If they're shooting at a random stranger sneaking through their camp, that's ambiguous. If he's sneaking through the streets of Boston and they go out of their way to open fire on him, that's a bit more clear-cut.

It has been so long . . . but seems like in FO2 "raiders" (basically violent criminal humans) were much more ambiguous? Like, you could have random encounters that might be a trader or wanderer (who just looked like a raider) or a raider (who acted like they might be a trader/wanderer).

I personally would like that, but it would completely change the dynamic of the game, and I do not think it would be very popular in general.

The meta part isn't the player vs character understanding of 23rd century Commonwealth culture, it's the player vs character ability to discern hostile from friendly without interacting with them first. I can aim at Mr. Abernathy, or a Diamond City scout, and tell that they're friendly by the green names that pop up. I can aim at a raider and tell that he'll shoot me on sight based on the red name that pops up. The character wouldn't realistically be able to make this distinction, and if they shoot at random armed people who haven't yet attacked them, they would technically the ones doing the raiding. Looloo is playing as if he can't make that distinction, which makes the circumstances of his interactions with raiders somewhat different from the typical "kill on sight" approach.

No arguments there. If they shoot at you, it's fair game. But the point the poster made is that his character doesn't typically get shot at first, because they're sneaky like that. So when he is the instigator of most of his conflicts, of which he likes to make sure are justified, it is sometimes difficult to discern who it's fair to shoot and who isn't.

That is true to an extent and I wish it was not in the game. Only companions and allies should have "name tags."

That said, it isn't completely true what you are saying. In order to get the name tag you have to be fairly close. I tend to inspect strangers at a distance, and I admit I have shot more than one Minuteman and my own Provisioner thinking they were a raider!

Still, the attire is a pretty much give away.

I was just thinking about this issue from a realworld cultural perspective. At least since FO3 Raiders have had distinctive fashion sense: "punk rock" style to put it simply. "non-Raiders" generally do not dress this way.

This is not necessarily in breach of reality. Gangs are known for their distinctive clothing, tattoos, etc. It would also make sense that generally, non-criminals avoid looking like raiders (so they don't get mistaken as one and shot from a distance). While there might be some benefits to disguising yourself as a gang member, those will tend to be very context specific and limited.

The two things (well three maybe) I think we are really missing here:

1. Raiders who are not too far down the path of criminal scum who might be brought back into the fold of civilized society. This could exist at both the individual and group levels, it could also occur as fissioning within Raider tribes. Could be very interesting if, when you get 2/3 done killing every raider in a hideout, two or three of them step forward hands up and say "I surrender!" and then explain that they had been considering leaving the group for weeks but were afraid to do so.

2. "Wannabe" raiders who are not very effective, and rout or surrender as soon as they start to take casualties.

3. Raiders who have temporarily disguised themselves as non-raiders in order to ambush. We had a few of those in Skyrim and the lack of this in FO4 is a shame. Honestly this last one could be pretty fricking hilarious, some chick with face tattoos and a mohawk wearing "farmer garb" and some big tough looking dude come strolling up to the gate with a Brahmin and claim (not very convincingly) "Hey, can we come in your settlement, we just want to do some trading . . ."

Clearly these were issues the designers had in mind when they included things like the extensive Raider monologues we are privy too if we sneak around in their midst and the apparently "grieving" raider, as well as their terminals, etc.

I'm not saying that Raiders should all be made ambiguous. They are my favorite adversary and it is fun that there is a virtually limitless supply of them to go and kill (and listen to for chuckles), but a DLC that added more complexity, ambiguity, quests and content to the "Raider faction" would be golden IMO.

VATS. Your Pipboy is feeding you all sorts of data, to include compass direction, icons for known and nearby locations, and Friend or Foe identification. Even without entering the VATS interface, Pipboy users are able to tell peaceful people from hostiles. Also why it doesn't register actual hostile pips until firefights start.

We've entered the age of personal computers. No point saying hello to people when you can just ping them on your Pip :T

Also why so many Pipboy-less settlers end up dead in raider camps, or implied dead from raider ambushes, and Vault Dwellers typically have fairly decent survival rates until their vaults get invaded. Vault 81's paranoia? They have that Friend or Foe identification interface, too. Common wastelanders need to use a lot more guesswork.

The raider attire in Fallout 4 actually is fairly normal by wasteland standards. Besides some of the metal pieces that some don't even have, they mostly wear long jons and road leathers. Nothing particularly menacing about either, as both would be fairly practical and common for wasteland garb. It's not all punkish like in 3. And while killing raiders for the way they dress does technically work, it's still an example of you gunning down someone based on the way they dress. Someone can not truly, indisputably know that they are villainous until they have attacked you or otherwise done something to prove it. From this very moral character's POV, the best course of action upon seeing someone dressed like that might be to avoid them, as the poster admitted that he often did.


Also, to your third point, there actually is one instance of a raider pretending to be innocent in order to trick the player. Their name even reads as "settler" and they wear an undershirt and jeans. I wish there was more of this.


@ your edit, I would love to see exactly what you describe. The Pitt kind of did something similar to this. I'd like another dlc focused on a raider faction.

I bet that same raider was part of a group that attacked you on sight

I'm pretty sure it's more of a gameplay feature. Not VATS. That definitely exists in some capacity, as Cass mentions it in New Vegas, but the friend-foe identification. How can something like that possibly work? If V81 opened their door and I immediately started slaughtering them, I guess you could say that it didn't. Why didn't my Pipboy register Salt-upon-Wounds, a warlord I'm there to kill, as an enemy moments before we fought in Honest Hearts, but it does register a raider as such half a mile away who doesn't even know I exist? What if a Provisioner is dressed exactly as that raider? Or my first encounter with a Diamond City guard, who looks every bit as dangerous and assuming as a raider from a distance? Skyrim had color coded friend/foe identification too, but lacked Pipboys. I think this one can easily be chalked up to a gameplay feature.

She was. And I responded by killing them all. I still enjoyed the experience of a raider using tactics besides shooting on sight.