Can we all agree Bethesda did power armor right?

[SportBrotha]

I do think the new power armor system is a pretty good idea all around. Requiring power, feeling like a one man tank, much better resistance to damage than regular armor and many other neat ideas. The one thing I don't like is that the game makes them look like over-sized action figures. They look like kids toys. I realized this as soon as I saw the new power armor in the trailer, but this fact became even more clear to me when I saw the Buzz Lightyear mod that retextures the T-60 into Buzz Lightyear colours.

To be clear, I like that PA is bulky, but I think Bathesda messed up the proportions. Everything is a bit too chunky for my tastes. Another good example is the X-01 helmet. I love that they went back to the original Enclave bald eagle style but the helmet looks so strange because it just has very strange proportions (in terms of the length of the thing). It's difficult to explain the exact features of the armor that makes me feel this way but maybe some of you have the same opinion.

 

[Askorti]

To be clear, I like that PA is bulky, but I think Bathesda messed up the proportions. Everything is a bit too chunky for my tastes. Another good example is the X-01 helmet. I love that they went back to the original Enclave bald eagle style but the helmet looks so strange because it just has very strange proportions (in terms of the length of the thing. It's difficult to explain the exact features of the armor that makes me feel this way but maybe some of you have the same opinion.

I have similar feelings about the T-51 torso. It seems too narrow but "fat" at the same time. As in, it is narrow when you look from the front, but protrudes too far forward when you look from the side. Am I making any sense? It messes up the proportions of a human body, which is flatter and wider, while the armor is narrower and fatter.

 

[BairdEC]

That Institute PA looks like the heavy suits from http://www.viciousprint.com/6commando/

 

[Irwin John Finster]

I started avoiding using Power Armor because I don't like the HUD color and it cannot be changed.

And before you say "Mods'll fix it!" I'm not downloading a hud color mod. Or any mods for this game. Nexus site has already reported Fallout 4 mods getting hacked with suspicious .dll files. Why would I want to risk a virus for such a bad game?

 

[Banestalker]

they gave it to us too early. they should've given it to us way later in the game, and made fusion cores much rarer.

or by making fusion cores so rare that you would think twice before taking the armor out for a spin. and only by joining the Brotherhood you could have access to a steady supply of fusion cores.

 

[SportBrotha]

I don't mind the HUD colour but I do think the HUD was pretty lackluster in general. A sad attempt to mimic Project Nevada and other mods that added HUDs specifically for power armor and other helmets. Bathesda's HUD looks like a dashboard to some kind of vehicle, not an in helmet HUD.

 

[Wooz]

I like it.

Shit, I think it's one of the things that Fallout 4 did really, really good. Bulky, soaks up low-level damage as a sponge, and doesn't make you feel like you've morphed into trashcan-man. You're a one man army in that thing. Your character's voice sounds like it's behind a mic. You can carry a truckload of stuff.

However, I agree that some decisions were made in the game's narrative that fuck up that 'ol classic Fallout gameplay. It's available way too early in the game, and you immediately have to fight an unusually high-level enemy with an unusually high level weapon. Granted, part of the game's balance is based on the procurement of ammunition for your guns, but it still feels in many ways very overpowered.

Loved the classic F2 power armor, nitpicked that the neck/shoulderpiece was segmented and moved separately.

 

[Cooldawg86]

yeah its like Pimp my ride Fallout. When you find one you like "Gawd Damn" ima mod the shit out of this and blow everything the fuck up. Amazing! Also you dont even keep the one from the beginning, why yall trippin?

• 

 

[TorontoReign]

I don't think they did it as good as people say. For one the pieces fall off instead of getting damaged. The exoskeleton looks like shit too. The Power Armor could be fixed with some good mods to make it a little better.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Not just a little. Mods to the rescue - as always with a Beth game ...

1. The fusion core. It should hold for a very long time, but it should be very rare and/or difficult to get. The T45 should take something else, that is more common.
2. The armor should not fall off. It's simply stupid to hear that a vault suit never takes any damage but a PA is made of toilet tissue.
3. It should be very costly to upgrade the armor. This should somewhat negate the fact that you don't have to repair it.
4. And last but not least, the armor should be extremly rare and hard to find. Particularly the highest tiers of PAs, TB51, Enclave armor etc.

The T45 should be extremly weak (for a PA) and it can eat trough fusion cells like crazy, that way you can leave it as "early" PA for the player.

 

[MercenarySnake]

I think the fusion core idea should be ditched, rid of the stupid paper mache armor, and make it super hard to get as in really rare with only one or maybe two power armors in the whole game. Allow it to be damaged but not "the paper mache pieces fall off when damaged" kind of damage. Like having it punctured for example. Make it like Fallout 1 and 2, how you can still get your ass kicked by super mutants, Deathclaws, and other tough creatures.

I'm sure my opinion is in the minority though but I thought I'd offer my opinion.

 

[Banestalker]

I think the fusion core idea should be ditched, rid of the stupid paper mache armor, and make it super hard to get as in really rare with only one or maybe two power armors in the whole game. Allow it to be damaged but not "the paper mache pieces fall off when damaged" kind of damage. Like having it punctured for example. Make it like Fallout 1 and 2, how you can still get your ass kicked by super mutants, Deathclaws, and other tough creatures.

I'm sure my opinion is in the minority though but I thought I'd offer my opinion.

I liked the fusion core idea because it added some kind of fuel that we had to watch out for, something that made early journeys in power armor costly. But mid to end game you just get bombarded by fusion cores i ended up even selling some and i still had alot...and they jsut keep coming.

But i do agree with the pieces falling off part. They should be damaged only. Not fall off.

 

[Artemis]

Fallout 4 definitely improve whole Power Armor mechanics, but on the other hand fail it badly.

So to speak, I remember my first visit in the "Glowing Sea". I was running my T-51b while searching for Vigil. From the time to time I eaten some of Rad-X, looking whole the time at the Geiger counter. Then suddenly some Legendary Deathclaw appear and the fight begun. In the process, my left leg was damaged and jumped off, I was about to reload my save game quickly when... Nothing pretty much happened. Whole atmosphere of that place was gone.

I was thinking that my Power Armor need to be hermetically sealed!

[...]The fact that I can smell Soto's burning flesh where his arm was taken off means that my power armor is no longer air tight, so I'm sucking up a lot more rads than I had planned on. I'm leaking hydraulics at an alarming rate. We need to get far enough away from this place before my armor dies.

Camarillo seemed fine physically, but he wandered off about an hour ago, mumbling something about Gehenna. That bastard has all the anti-rad.

That leaves Soto and myself. We can't make it far enough away from here without the anti-rads, so I've got to try to find Camarillo before it's too late.

Sgt. D. Allen, United States Armed Forces.

So not much improvement to the lore actually.

Even more, I never known that I could repair damaged part that jumped off from the exoskeleton. I thought that I need to repair in whole the time, so I would not lose it.

 

[TheGreatCornholio]

They had the right idea but imperfect execution

Fusion cores should last longer and be much more difficult to get. PA was designed for warfare and in a firefight its not practical to exit the suit and replace the fusion core every 20 minutes

 

[Artemis]

They had the right idea but imperfect execution

Sounds like pretty much like the Bethesda overall.

I can even say, that I would not have problem with Power Armor as it is, if it was hard to maintain and run. I used to find one rusty T-45 without right arm and legs on one mission. Looks very post-apocalyptic for me. But those things are everywhere!

Beside... Imagine that while being part of the Brotherhood of Steel, they would give you quest to acquire those suits of Power Armor, as they get somehow intel about pre-war concentration of them. That could be one of their secondary goals of visiting the Commonwealth.

 

[ZigzagPX4]

It's not that Bethesda's lore didn't make sense this time round, they just skipped explaining the lore entirely so they didn't have to explain whether or not it made sense and why. Power armour abundance for example.

Which makes me wonder why they didn't take that route with things like super mutants and the ghoul kid in a fridge. I mean, if you've already gone for "no explanations" over "crap explanations" you might as well go all the way.

Anyone could've come up with better ideas. So Bethesda definitely left things vague intentionally, so as to not risk a single thing. Hell, if they went their classic route, we might have "kid in a fridge" level of logical fallacies in every quest, but we might have ended up with a better game.

Unlike normal developers for some reason, they can't make interesting quests that also makes sense. For Bethesda, it's either "makes sense" or "interesting quest". They went with the compromise for all of Fallout 4.

 

[Risewild]

Bethesda did power armor right?
Yes and no... They finally made Power armor be like the personal tank vehicle it was supposed to be so I give them props for that and then messed up everything else about it .

• They messed up by saying there was a new superior Pre-war power armor (T-60) totally out of the blue
  
• They messed up by saying power armor is powered by some new thing called Fusion Cores
• They messed up by making anyone be able to equip and use a power armor without any training at all, even driving an automatic car needs months of training for example
• They messed up by making Raiders have their own strange power armor
• They messed up by making the most powerful and armored armor in the whole pre-war world being able to be repaired with crushed coffee cups and other junk
• They messed up by leaving suits of power armor just sitting in random nonsense places (specially since there is not hard to just find or buy a Fusion Core and take those armors home)
• They messed up for making the Hotrod power armor enthusiasts (what the hell Bethesda!)
• They messed up by giving power armor too soon and for no good reason at all (unless you count unleashing a deathclaw at the player in less than one hour playing a good reason)
• They messed up by allowing totally different power armor model parts to fit seamlessly with each-other on a non altered or custom frame

Just my two cents

 

[Artemis]

And I was thinking, where they find the idea of Fusion Core... Here is it:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fusion_battery

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Peoria

So Bethesda does do the research after all, but they are taking wrong paths and bad decisions.

 

[Brivoo]

I rather like the new Power Armour, for reasons that have already been mentioned plenty of times; it feels powerful and provides decent protection, as opposed to the the tin can you donned in 3 and NV. The fact that it is essentially a vehicle and moddable was also a nice touch.

A lot of the criticisms towards it are regarding lore, and whilst I could explain them away, Bethesda wasn't thinking along my lines when they made the game, so I don't find them worth defending in that regard. I will say, however, that a lot of decisions regarding PA are based on game balance, such as fusion cores lasting minutes to make Power Armour a one-off thing at the beginning of the game and plentiful so they can be worn reliably towards the end, or pieces breaking off so that combat becomes increasingly hectic as protection decreases.

Bethesda is really just concern with the shooter gameplay when it comes to Fallout, so lore and roleplaying take a back seat and whilst I agree that they should've given PA later and made fusion cores rarer but last longer, Bethesda probably did what they thought was right and, understandably for once, left this kind of tweaking issue to modders.

I do have my complaints too, however.

-I feel as if the levelling list for Power Armours are dumb. I don't like how, if I'm on a character that doesn't look and utilize them regularly, I can go from the T-45 at the very beginning right to an X-01 in the Glowing Sea as my second armour; PAs should have precise locations like Morrowind Daedric armours, and perhaps have some pre-modded to make up for the lack of variety.

-The T-60 is pure laziness. Bethesda could not be bothered to come up with an original Power Armour so they just buffed up the T-45 design and shoehorned it into the lore, resulting in a PA that was basically deployed for minutes before the bombs fell. What would've made sense as an explanation is if it had been any model between the T-45 and the T-51, making the T-51 the higher tier one and placing the T-60 in its vacant place.

-The Raider Power Armour, whilst a cool concept, is pulled off terribly. By the time raiders spawn with it at a reliable pace, it becomes a non-issue, and even when obtained it has such a limited range of options it kills any motivation to wear it. It feels as if it should've been a high tier regular armour.

-There PAs should have been more balanced, since once you get an X-01, there's no reason to wear anything else. Perhaps the X-01 could've been superior but less durable, and the T-60 and T-51 have specialized damage resistances, or something.

-The variety regarding any aspect of the Power Armours (mods, parts, etc.) is sorely lacking.


As for mods, Fallout 4 is an incredibly lazy game. Almost every single new feature was a mod in NV and 3(and I say almost just to cover my ass, since I haven't found any that aren't) and they were all introduced specifically with modders in mind. It's the Post Apocalyptic version of Garry's Mod. Saying "mods don't count" is a good principle in other games, but it's essentially all that we have when it comes to this one.

 

[Stone Cold Robert House]

-The Raider Power Armour, whilst a cool concept, is pulled off terribly. By the time raiders spawn with it at a reliable pace, it becomes a non-issue, and even when obtained it has such a limited range of options it kills any motivation to wear it. It feels as if it should've been a high tier regular armour.

The existence of raider armor is what bothers me, honestly. Power armor is supposed to be the absolute peak of Pre-War technological achievement. It should take a high level of knowledge to properly mantain or reverse engineer. The fact raiders can just take pieces of power armor and some scrap then jury rig it to something that works is odd. The fact it has low stats helps, but it doesn't seem like they should have the knowledge to even make it walk functionally.