One big change could come to Fallout 5's raiders is the game takes some ideas that were brought forward by Fallout 76. At this point, it's difficult to imagine a Fallout title without raiders, given their continuous appearances at almost all levels of the games. Even so, even the most long-running parts of the series can generally use some sort of innovation every now and then. With raiders being an aspect of the Fallout universe that is impossible to ignore, it could be their turn, giving Fallout 5 could give fans a completely new version of the standby enemies.
Although Fallout's raiders can't be jumped on like Super Mario's Goombas, their role is quite similar. They are one of the most common enemies in the games, although their weapons make them far more dangerous than Goombas typically are. Unless a part of the map is completely controlled by monsters or a certain faction, there's a safe bet that raiders will be roaming somewhere. Players of all skill levels will have to contend with them eventually, in quests as well as random encounters. In almost all of these occasions, there is no way for the player to talk their way out of the impending fight.
Fallout 5's Raiders Might Not All Have to be Evil
Among the many new features that were added in Fallout 76's Wastelanders DLC were new groups of raiders in the Appalachia wasteland. One faction, the Blood Eagles, behaves similarly to typical raiders, being hostile and violent by default and acting as nothing more than enemies to fight. However, there are some raiders, most notably the Crater Raiders, who the player can actually speak to and work alongside. They get some storylines of their own that the player can dive into, and it provides a different look at raiders from previous games. This showed that not all raiders in Fallout are truly evil.
Fallout 76 didn't feature the series' first nonviolent interactions with raiders, but it was a remarkable shift. Fallout 4's Nuka-World DLC was all about a theme park filled with raiders that the player could become the leader of. However, each of the three raider factions were still unambiguously villainous throughout the questline. One could also argue that the Great Khans storyline from Fallout: New Vegas was a raider-centric questline, but they were much more organized than the series' usual raider gangs despite their illegal actions. While the Great Khans were handled decently, Fallout 76 was the most nuanced portrayal for traditional Fallout raiders.
There is a lot of potential for Fallout 5 to do more with its raiders. There could be plenty of new roleplaying opportunities in Fallout 5 by trying new things with raiders. Perhaps the player could encounter a group of generally good people who had to turn to scavenging the wastes to survive, or a raider crew with principles that they refuse to compromise. Of course, the typical violent raiders could also exist to provide a counterpoint to the more sympathetic ones. More depth to Fallout 5's raiders could be the key to some new storytelling ideas that haven't been explored yet.
Raiders have almost never played a major storyline role, but they're a major part of the Fallout universe nonetheless. Probably the biggest thing Fallout 5 can take from Fallout 76 would be the opportunity to try something new with the raiders of the wasteland. Perhaps the storyline could place a focus on the varying situations of raiders in the wasteland, or it could feature in just one of the game's many side quests spread out across the world. Either way, a new perspective for Fallout 5's raiders could add another level of interest to the game.
Fallout 76 is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
