Man if they can't die - what the hell.........? They don't seem to die when raiders attack...??? They keep getting back up....? Please tell me they can die? Why waste my time defending them if they can't?

What the hell is wrong with Bethesda? Companions, npcs can't die etc....

It's like they think we can't handle death.. You know it's totally the opposite. When a companion, npc, CAN die it creates so much more of an attachment.. I can remember my elf companion in Skyrim, he'd been with me for ages, so many missions together... When he died in battle it's was genuinely emotional and epic, there was a real sense of loss......

These NPC's that cannot die - you don't give a stuff about them.... They can't die so why waste a Stimpaks on them???

You know so what if they found people would just re-load when Dogmeat died in the early play testing.... SO WHAT?!

I say death is so important in games like this -- it creates more of a connection an attachment with game characters because you know they CAN die.... And you can lose them permanently .....

Except they *can* die. I lost Sheffield in an attack.

Could be they're Protected, which means enemies will just ignore them when they're health is low enough - you can still kill them with friendly fire though. Could also be that new settlers spawn in their place.

Sheffield?

Oh so the CAN die? Settlers? Well my just go down to the ground for 20seconds and then get back up.... ?

I still hold to companions should be able to die as well!!

What would be great is a Survival difficulty with options. So people could turn on and off what they like and do not like. Like ammo having weight, companions could be killed etc.

the reasoning is, first off, while it MAY add some kind of attachment for you, most players grow attached to them normally, so when they die, they just reload the game, thus eliminating the whole death.

Add having to eat/drink/sleep to that list, yes.

This, so much this.

Well Bioware added alot of difficulty aspects to Dragon Age Inquisition in its last patch. So you could fine tune your own difficulty with extra options. Its not unlikely that Bethesda will patch something like this into the game later on. It does after all add to the lifetime of the game.

Should also keep in mind that many companions have died by circumstances beyond the players control. The AI isn`t perfect and companions do things that a normal person wouldn`t do. Like run screaming into a mob of supermutants guns blazing when you are trying to sneak past past them. It`s a lot easier to make them immortal and have the downed system them worrying about them being one shot by a deathclaw or blown up by a fatman or running into a pack of mobs you wanted to avoid.

I'm not fond of essential npcs either. I don't use companions because I don't like it when they keep not dying in circumstances they should. Understandable that some get upset when they lose them to forces beyond their control as well. I too was one that hoped survival was for those sorts of things. I'm not sure why we needed a hard, super hard and a really really hard setting. I wonder if they planned on doing it and then changed their minds, maybe weren't happy with the way it worked or it was more time consuming than they hoped for.

No, not afraid death. They just make fail safe games. See Skyrim

Lots of people were annoyed by NPCs dying in Skyrim because of dragon and vampire attacks. I assume this is Bethesda's way of making sure it doesn't happen again.

Having just witnessed Dogmeat and Piper both charge at a Super Mutant Suicider on five separate occasions, I'm glad companions are invincible.

I've had at least 3 different situations, where I explored the top of a building and Dogmeat had one of his moments, where he finds something, shoots off and runs over the edge of the roof, ending up in the stret whining around IF they could die, this feature would need to be reworked or removed, otherwise he would kill himself without you having any chance to avoid it...

this plus the need of food, drink, sleep...

people hated npcs dying in skyrim due to the [censored] AI forcing a level 1 shop keeper with no armour and only a steel dagger to and attack a freaking lvl 15+ dragon/vampire when they should or ran into their house and hid and left it to the guards and player to handle

Which is stupid because implementing a "Fight or Flight" AI would have been very simple. I mean it is very simple in terms of scripting. They'd just need like 3 boolean variables, something like "Brave, Neutral, Coward" then according to which one is ticked per NPC, the script would look for a level difference between the NPC and the enemy and based on a threshold (say, like 3-5 level difference) decide whether they are gonna flee in terror or charge against them (the neutral one could be made with an RNG so 50% of the time they fight, 50% of the time they flee).

Villagers and farmers would most often be ticked as "Cowards", guards would always be ticked as "Brave" (since no matter what their job is to defend the citizens putting their own life on the line) and random NPC's would most often be "Neutral". Of course such an AI could easily be extended to have more sophisticated mechanisms but even something very simple as this, would have made a huge difference.

With all this mention of Skyrim, I can't help but note that default survival is not such a bad thing, and it can always be undone by mods. People hated Dawnguard because vampires killed off the NPCs and there was nobody left to trade with or talk to sometimes. However, mods like "When VAmpires Attack" came along and "fixed" it. the nice thing about it being left to mods is simply that you have the option of choice that way, unless you're on console.

The same is true for "Real Needs and Diseases" "Frostfall", "Cold and Wet" and so forth. Personally, I think it's a good thing that Bethesda didn't write in mandatory NPC death and leaves it up to the modders so the player can choose eventually if they want all these things. For Bethesda to cover all possible bases would probably create a script bloated game that would likely not be much fun.

yeah.... I'll admit to reloading whenever a companion dies... anything else I live with.

@OP Settlers can die.. I put a bullet into the back of one of the named npcs in finch farm by accident during a super mutant fight and he dropped to the ground, dead... I'm more worried about how the family didn't even react when the fight was over... damn.

I think the settlers can die, but if you yourself try to kill them they'll just keep getting back up. I've got a pretty extensive supply line set up throughout my settlements, and a few days ago one of the links in the chain disappeared. Now I can't find the settler that I had assigned to it. It could have just been some kind of glitch though.

Personally I don't mind that the companion characters can't die. I actually prefer it that way. I've been traveling with Piper for the most part and I've reached the romance stage. I do have an actual attachment to the character. If she died in combat, I'd just reload the game anyway. I wouldn't just accept her death and move on. I think that this should be an option that can be turned on or off depending on the players preferences though.

Why not make the character immortal as well to avoid reloading.

Yeah, Fable 3 did this IIRC... that was such a bad idea. If there's no fail state what's the point?

I believe settlers can die, even those assigned to supply lines - attacked on the road. I haven't yet had a settlement attack big enough to see if this is the case, or set up supply lines yet.

I read that if a provisioner is going to be attacked, it will only be one within the same loading zone as the one you're in at the time. If this is the case, keep an ear out for gun fire, etc. This would enable you to defend your provisioner and makes sense. It's only what I read from elsewhere on here, so currently have no experience of it myself.

That's actually not a bad design idea. Few games successfully implemented it. All you need is to impose some kind of penalty in place of the death. For example in Mount and Blade you would become prisoner and have part of your equipment and inventory taken away. It's better game-wise then die/reload since die/reload does not punish player for mistakes.

Τrue. Same happens in Dark Souls essentially. But if a company is afraid of having some generic settlers die because that will throw back your optional settlement building minigame a bit, a penalty like the one in M&B or DS is never going to happen.

Because most people don't want their entire slog through the Waste Land to be transformed into the Never Ending Escort Mission From Hell?

While I have no problem with them adding an Ashley-Graham-Without-The-Upskirts-Mode, I would rather it be put further back in Development Limbo than Bug Fixes