Can we all agree Bethesda did power armor right?

[Eddard]

Pros

1. Power armor as it should be. Feels like a tank. No more getting hurt by assault rifles by NCR troopers like in FNV, no more getting insta-killed by 19th century brush guns. Bulletproof.

2. Feels like you're in power armor when you're walking, instead of a heavy lard of metal that only gives marginally better DT. I think that was the biggest problem with power armor in previous games. Why take a 10% reduction in speed for only 8 more DT, especially when 20% of damage will bleed through anyway?

3. You can customize your armor, always good in an RPG. The feature is pretty lacking right now but I expect mods to fix this.

4. If you fall down from a tremendous height you take no fall damage and stun enemies around you.



"Cons"

1. I see everyone complaining on this about the lore retcon concerning the power supply. Who cares? You can easily rationalize that by saying the fusion cores dissipated most of their energy in the 300 years of their existence, and now only have enough energy left to power PA for an hour or two. Makes sense, you can't expect energy to be stored that long at 100% power.

2. The UI visor overplay. I expect a Project Boston to fix this cause right now it looks kind of crap.

3. You get it way too early. This one I agree with. I really liked the PA training thing in FNV that forced you to seek out the BOS and work with them. Maybe if PAT was a thing in FO4 I would hesitate to kill the asshole BOS.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

Saying they got the Power Armor "right" is like saying you found a peanut in a pile of poo. It's still in a pile of poo.

They made it look cooler. So what? That is not even 1% of the game. They give it to you in the first 40 minutes of the game along with a minigun and have you shooting deathclaws. This Call of Duty kind of action game is merely to appeal to children.

EDIT: Also, you refer to Fallout 4 as an RPG. I don't think that word means what you think it means.

 

[r0b0wnz]

Pros

1. Power armor as it should be. Feels like a tank. No more getting hurt by assault rifles by NCR troopers like in FNV, no more getting insta-killed by 19th century brush guns. Bulletproof.

2. Feels like you're in power armor when you're walking, instead of a heavy lard of metal that only gives marginally better DT. I think that was the biggest problem with power armor in previous games. Why take a 10% reduction in speed for only 8 more DT, especially when 20% of damage will bleed through anyway?

3. You can customize your armor, always good in anrpg. The feature is pretty lacking right now but I expect mods to fix this.

4. If you fall down from a tremendous height you take no fall damage and stun enemies around you.



"Cons"

1. I see everyone complaining on this about the lore retcon concerning the power supply. Who cares? You can easily rationalize that by saying the fusion cores dissipated most of their energy in the 300 years of their existence, and now only have enough energy left to power PA for an hour or two. Makes sense, you can't expect energy to be stored that long at 100% power.

2. The UI visor overplay. I expect a Project Boston to fix this cause right now it looks kind of crap.

3. You get it way too early. This one I agree with. I really liked the PA training thing in FNV that forced you to seek out the BOS and work with them. Maybe if PAT was a thing in FO4 I would hesitate to kill the asshole BOS.

the game isn't an rpg

 

[GlutinousRice]

In my mind putting power armor should looked more or less like that.

 

[Hellion]

It is one of the better ideas, compared to other stuff seen in the game.

If you got it a bit later into the game instead of on your first quest, if fusion cores were a bit more scarce so that you wouldn't eventually end up with a limitless supply of them, and if Power Armor was RARE and not worn by virtually everyone in the world (I even encountered Raiders wearing Power Armor when I was level 2 or 3), it might have worked even better.

 

[cybazz]

In my mind putting power armor should looked more or less like that.

That's the nearest in modern fiction to fallout pa you can find. It should be seamless like in fo3 but bigger heavier and slower. In fo4 it's some clunky vintage tank, instead of a super maneuverable wearable robot.

In fo3 they misunderstood the concept, in fo4 they got the gabarites but not the tech.
Hard to explain if you're not into technicalities, first two fallouts were basically hard scifi clothed in pulp tropes and dark humour. That's why it's hard to get for the wider audiences of fo3 and 4 what problems do the older fans have with them.

As to the fusion cells, another problem with the hard scifi thing, they practically don't deplete if they're not activated and there's nothing in them that could explode.

 

[GlowHound]

Nope. They did it better, but they still fucked up a lot, from how early you get it, to how common it is, to how pieces can completely break off the frame.

And the power. "Who cares?" Me. I'm not rationalizing dick, having to collect quickly-draining batteries to keep my PA running when it should last essentially forever is tedious bullshit that just makes Power Armor lame.

 

[Trannigan]

Power armor does seem like a vast improvement over the previous 2 incarnations.

 

[Hassknecht]

In my mind putting power armor should looked more or less like that.

That's the nearest in modern fiction to fallout pa you can find. It should be seamless like in fo3 but bigger heavier and slower. In fo4 it's some clunky vintage tank, instead of a super maneuverable wearable robot.

In fo3 they misunderstood the concept, in fo4 they got the gabarites but not the tech.
Hard to explain if you're not into technicalities, first two fallouts were basically hard scifi clothed in pulp tropes and dark humour. That's why it's hard to get for the wider audiences of fo3 and 4 what problems do the older fans have with them.

As to the fusion cells, another problem with the hard scifi thing, they practically don't deplete if they're not activated and there's nothing in them that could explode.

Hard Sci Fi? Bollocks. Fallout is very, very far from a Hard Sci Fi setting. Handwavium is practically a core tenet of the setting o_O There's a bit of technobabble involved here and there, but technobabble doesn't make it hard.

 

[phipboy]

I personally like it more as just a normal armor like in the older games. But you definitely get it way too early in Fallout 4, no question about it. Ridiculously early.

 

[Chromevod]

I'd say it's better than in 3/NV. It was kind of... pointless, in the end, there. It looked cool, but that was about it. The armor in this game is fairly close to how I envisioned it working in the first two games. I'm not a huge fan of the way they dealt with the fuel supply, but I got the perks needed, gathered them up, and now that I've beaten the game I got the mod that makes them last longer. Barring the fuel issue, despite flaws with the rest of the game I think Bethesda nailed the armor.

 

[Askorti]

I would say that the way you employ it (get into it and use it) and the looks are the only things they have done well.
Power supply, how early you get it, repairing it, lore retconning and how common it is are definitely not done right.
So as it often is with bethesda, one step forward, two steps back.

 

[MercenarySnake]

Better than 3/NV but I didn't bother wearing it past the Deathclaw tutorial since I find it useless. I prefer the way the originals did it.

 

[Walpknut]

THe problems the new PA has come from them giving it on the first quest and having to "balance" it heavily. While it does feel like a tank and jumping off the Prydwen and landing unscathed is a pretty cool thing, the fact that now they need "Fusion cores" that run out so fast, that the bits and pieces of them just fly off when damaged while your regular armor just stays comfortably on you even after getting shot at, makes it feel pretty underwhelming after prolonged use.

Personally I didn't use it until I started the BOS quest line and I just got bored of the repetitive enemy gauntlets, I just starting tearing everything apart easily but after completing their main quest I left it resting on the Power Station in Red Rocket while still having about 10 fusion cores left, only reason I resumed usage was because I recently found a T-51 randomly on a boat.

 

[fakeangel]

Pretty much what Walpk said

 

[Chromevod]

I've been using the T-51 for a while now. I got all the parts upgraded to the -f suffix. As an added bonus, the Vault-Tec paint job looks really good on it. Better than it does on the other armors, I'd argue.

 

[AgentBJ09]

Pros

1. Power armor as it should be. Feels like a tank. No more getting hurt by assault rifles by NCR troopers like in FNV, no more getting insta-killed by 19th century brush guns. Bulletproof.

2. Feels like you're in power armor when you're walking, instead of a heavy lard of metal that only gives marginally better DT. I think that was the biggest problem with power armor in previous games. Why take a 10% reduction in speed for only 8 more DT, especially when 20% of damage will bleed through anyway?

3. You can customize your armor, always good in an RPG. The feature is pretty lacking right now but I expect mods to fix this.

4. If you fall down from a tremendous height you take no fall damage and stun enemies around you.



"Cons"

1. I see everyone complaining on this about the lore retcon concerning the power supply. Who cares? You can easily rationalize that by saying the fusion cores dissipated most of their energy in the 300 years of their existence, and now only have enough energy left to power PA for an hour or two. Makes sense, you can't expect energy to be stored that long at 100% power.

2. The UI visor overplay. I expect a Project Boston to fix this cause right now it looks kind of crap.

3. You get it way too early. This one I agree with. I really liked the PA training thing in FNV that forced you to seek out the BOS and work with them. Maybe if PAT was a thing in FO4 I would hesitate to kill the asshole BOS.

Going point by point...

P1 and P2 - Tanks do not have armor that chips away with damage, and ammo like the .50 and AP are supposed to pierce steel. Plus, the armor system used for Power Armor is the same collective DR system we saw in Skyrim, IE the more powerful pieces you equip, the more damage you can brush off. It doesn't completely eliminate damage of weak hits, which was what DT did. (Bethesda may be showing they understand the need for wear and tear of armor, but in the most illogical way.)

P3 - Two things. One, this is a moot point, because its another customization and building system thrown in that is unrelated to your avatar, and two you're falling into the trap of "I'll wait for someone with no hand in the development of this game to fix what was part of the $60 I gave Bethesda."

P4 - True, but unless you have a good automatic on-hand, you'd be better served by staying high up and sniping enemies.

---

C1 - Here's the thing: Emil has said on-record that he and Bethesda do not want to step on or change the lore that Black Isle/Obsidian/Sawyer/Avalone wrote into this series with Fallout 1 and 2. This Power Core idea is an example of them doing just that, because every armor from the t-45b to the X-01 needs them to function.

C2 - Again, laying expectation on mods to fix things. Don't fall into that trap; its an excuse for sub-par work on the dev's part.

C3 - If you couldn't use Power Armor as efficiently without the training, then getting it so early would've worked in concert with the Vault Survivor being wet behind the ears in this world and fixed a role-playing issue.

 

[Articulo34]

snip

All of what you said. Also the fact that the PA gets damaged too when used by companions. The same companions that cannot die, at all, ever.

Another thing that bothers me is the T-60. Couldn´t Bethesda just fit it in by making it an improvement over the T-45 (they look quite similar) made by the bloody BoS in the 10 years between FO3 and 4? Shit, they built the Prywden in 8. It would have made much more sense than just shoehorn it as a pre-war PA when it has been established many times that the T-51B was the state of the art when the bombs fell.

All in all is just
another kick to the lore

 

[Gizmojunk]

[PA armor as a vehicle]
It is one of the better ideas, compared to other stuff seen in the game.

It was also mentioned repeatedly for years on their forums.

___________

I really like the look of the Enclave armor (body & helmet); and am glad that they did not adopt that absurd ventilator fan on the back; but if that armor is presented as an original relic, then they did the face notably wrong. They opted for a symmetrical design even though the original helmet was deliberately asymmetric.

 

[TorontoReign]

Pros

1. I see everyone complaining on this about the lore retcon concerning the power supply. Who cares?

I care. They could have went about it a different way instead of retconning shit that was clearly stated in the old games.