Midwestern Power Armor should've been "T-60"

[PaxVenire]

I was looking at a picture of T-60 Power Armor recently, reminding myself just how ugly and unoriginal it was and how it was lazily retconned to be Pre-War tech surpassing the T-51 in number but somehow being worse in quality (which I know happens irl, but I still find it lazy. I digress). Then I started wondering what T-60 might've looked like if it were made Post-War, and specifically if it were made post-Brotherhood of Steel/Enclave War. I started imagining in my head what components of Power Armor we see in Fallout 3 could've been cobbled to make something new, and then I realized I was just picturing Midwestern Power Armor.

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Midwestern Power Armor looks exactly like something that would be designed in the post-war. It certainly doesn't look 1950s retro-esque, something the Fallout: Tactics developers even talked about:

I would redo the sprite of the Power Armor to make it more retro. Not that there is anything technically wrong with the sprite, it's a great piece of art. It's just that it is a bit out of place in the Fallout Universe. But bear in mind that we had to design it over a year ago and Interplay approved everything we did. - Tony Oakden, producer of FOT

I mean just look at it, the mask looks like APA, the shoulder armor looks like T-51, perhaps the horns on the helmet could've been inspired by Black Devil Power Armor, the build of the suit is far more slim fit and agile-looking than the bulkiness of yesteryear's Powered Armor, all around it looks like an upgrade to everything we've seen.

I also think it's weird how this is the only explanation we get for why the Powered Armor looks so different in Fallout: Tactics:

Why does the Power armor look so different from previous models? - Different group of BOS, different technology. - Ed Orman

I agree with this quote in that different technologies would exist out in the vast wasteland, but perhaps we could've gotten a reason with this. And while Fallout: Tactics is considered canon, it's very pick-and-choose with Bethesda, so it wouldn't have been surprising if this was how Midwestern Power Armor was reintroduced.

 

[Hassknecht]

T-60 should have been a BOS-made upgrade of T-45 suits, since they look so similar. But no, Bethesda needed their "trademark" power armor to be pre-war so it could be in the pre-war scenes, of course.

 

[Golbolco]

T-60 should have been a BOS-made upgrade of T-45 suits, since they look so similar. But no, Bethesda needed their "trademark" power armor to be pre-war so it could be in the pre-war scenes, of course.

Is this really what happened? I'm not sure it is.

After all, Bethesda has the T-45 design and the T-60 is very obviously a bulked-up T-45. If they wanted to, they could have used the T-45 armor in the pre-war scenes.

I think the reason they made the T-60 armor isn't for some kind of branding purpose. Because of its resemblance to T-45, I suspect that the design was initially for T-45 on the new engine with the new power armor mechanics, but then after modeling it they realized that it looked totally unlike T-45 so they created a new designation for it. This explains why T-45 looks so awkward on the new engine, by the way.

All just a theory of course. Personally, I find T-60 particularly aberrant: Bethesda has done a good job in Fallout 76 with creating two more armor sets meant to be in between T-51 and APA: the T-65 armor and the Hellcat power armor. Both of them look like they're part of the chain progressing towards APA while also holding their own identities, unlike T-60 whose identity rides on T-45. If you chart out all of the power armors under both Interplay and Bethesda, I don't think any of them except T-60 (and yes, I include the Midwest armor; it doesn't need to look more "retro") look bad.

 

[Hassknecht]

Is this really what happened? I'm not sure it is.

After all, Bethesda has the T-45 design and the T-60 is very obviously a bulked-up T-45. If they wanted to, they could have used the T-45 armor in the pre-war scenes.

I think the reason they made the T-60 armor isn't for some kind of branding purpose. Because of its resemblance to T-45, I suspect that the design was initially for T-45 on the new engine with the new power armor mechanics, but then after modeling it they realized that it looked totally unlike T-45 so they created a new designation for it. This explains why T-45 looks so awkward on the new engine, by the way.

All just a theory of course. Personally, I find T-60 particularly aberrant: Bethesda has done a good job in Fallout 76 with creating two more armor sets meant to be in between T-51 and APA: the T-65 armor and the Hellcat power armor. Both of them look like they're part of the chain progressing towards APA while also holding their own identities, unlike T-60 whose identity rides on T-45. If you chart out all of the power armors under both Interplay and Bethesda, I don't think any of them except T-60 (and yes, I include the Midwest armor; it doesn't need to look more "retro") look bad.

I think that's what happened. They wanted to add a new, better, cooler power armor with a higher number (but looking like their own design) and also have it in their pre-war promo material. They wanted "their" power armor to be the pinnacle of pre war power armor technology.

 

[Golbolco]

I think that's what happened. They wanted to add a new, better, cooler power armor with a higher number (but looking like their own design) and also have it in their pre-war promo material. They wanted "their" power armor to be the pinnacle of pre war power armor technology.

I'm not sure Bethesda is even coordinated enough to make this kind of decision. A lot of their decisions (especially with writing) do come across as malicious, but one of the most interesting things we've learned from the failure of Starfield is that they haven't used design documents since 2008. How can they communicate "we need our power armor to be the best" and then engineer their T-60 design from that?

They also don't seem to have an aversion to T-51 since they plastered it all over the Fallout 76 promotional material, and from what we know of the development they were very proud of that game until the launch embarrassed them for months on end. When Bethesda does make outwardly malicious decisions, it tends to be more pointed than this.

And T-60 isn't the best armor in Fallout 4 either. X-01 (their bastardized version of APA) does beat it with regard to stats.

In fact, I just checked the wiki, and this quote comes from Fallout 4's artbook:

"Our primary goal with the power armor was to make it feel less like a suit that you'd wear and more like a vehicle you'd operate. this design began as a reimagining of the T-45d, but it was different enough that we dubbed it the T-60. This way we could bring the T-45 back as its own variant. Although the look was settled on early, some details and proportions were revisited when we adapted the power armor to work as a modular system of plates that attached to a standardized endoframe. In this early version, the arms and legs needed more bulk to make room for the operator and the frame."

So the designers were in fact just remaking T-45 to fit their new design scheme.

 

[dreamcatcher40drank]

power armor = slow

 

[Slaughter Manslaught]

Its interesting that in FO76, T-60 is weaker than T-51b. I think the T-60 is meant to be more of a modernization of the T-45 design, whereas the T-51 is its own thing, still the top model of pre-war armor except for secret and prototype stuff like the X-01 and T-65.

And then you have the FO3 "Black Devil" which looks a lot like the Midwestern Power Armor.
Black Devil is also curious in that it's said to be "Advanced Power Armor MkII". So allegedly the same armor you can get in the Oil Rig in FO2. But not only is the appearance different, the resistances also don't match. APA MkII is way better than T-51, and yet the alleged APA MkII from FO3 is pretty much comparable to T-45d and inferior to T-51.

I have a head canon that "Black Devil is APA MkII and therefore best armor ever" is blatant lies and propaganda by the Enclave. It's essentially a mass-produced fully-ceramic T-45-analogue armor they made, because that was the best they could do until Duraframe became a thing. It just makes more sense than the Enclave deciding to wear inferior armor for the lolz.

I always wanted the return of the Midwestern Power Armor myself. Its such a sick design, and its origin feels like an untold story there.

 

[Yossarrion]

Its interesting that in FO76, T-60 is weaker than T-51b. I think the T-60 is meant to be more of a modernization of the T-45 design, whereas the T-51 is its own thing, still the top model of pre-war armor except for secret and prototype stuff like the X-01 and T-65.

And then you have the FO3 "Black Devil" which looks a lot like the Midwestern Power Armor.
Black Devil is also curious in that it's said to be "Advanced Power Armor MkII". So allegedly the same armor you can get in the Oil Rig in FO2. But not only is the appearance different, the resistances also don't match. APA MkII is way better than T-51, and yet the alleged APA MkII from FO3 is pretty much comparable to T-45d and inferior to T-51.

I have a head canon that "Black Devil is APA MkII and therefore best armor ever" is blatant lies and propaganda by the Enclave. It's essentially a mass-produced fully-ceramic T-45-analogue armor they made, because that was the best they could do until Duraframe became a thing. It just makes more sense than the Enclave deciding to wear inferior armor for the lolz.

I always wanted the return of the Midwestern Power Armor myself. Its such a sick design, and its origin feels like an untold story there.

I think when the enclave fled across the country in order for them to make repairs on the suits they jury rigged it with t45 and it led to it getting downgraded. That's my own idea at least

 

[YeeCop]

I think that's what happened. They wanted to add a new, better, cooler power armor with a higher number (but looking like their own design) and also have it in their pre-war promo material. They wanted "their" power armor to be the pinnacle of pre war power armor technology.

This is an especially interesting deviation given the T-45s introduced in Fo3 were slightly inferior to T-50s, but had the advantage of mass production. Guess that tidbit doesn't matter anymore! It's all about the newest kewl pre-war power armor. Guarantee you Fallout 5 will have some other dazzling new pre-war power armor introduction that the nu-fans will eat up without question.

 

[eissa]

Just turn T-60 into bare exoskeleton but with lots of modularity including mods, heavy weapon configuration, utilities, etc.

 

[IKnowStuff]

T-60 should have been a BOS-made upgrade of T-45 suits, since they look so similar. But no, Bethesda needed their "trademark" power armor to be pre-war so it could be in the pre-war scenes, of course.

Agreed, with all the tech they have available I find it hard to believe they aren’t able to cobble together a new set of power armor, in this case the T-60 especially considering it’s so similar to the T-45 as you mentioned

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

I was looking at a picture of T-60 Power Armor recently, reminding myself just how ugly and unoriginal it was and how it was lazily retconned to be Pre-War tech surpassing the T-51 in number but somehow being worse in quality (which I know happens irl, but I still find it lazy. I digress). Then I started wondering what T-60 might've looked like if it were made Post-War, and specifically if it were made post-Brotherhood of Steel/Enclave War. I started imagining in my head what components of Power Armor we see in Fallout 3 could've been cobbled to make something new, and then I realized I was just picturing Midwestern Power Armor.

View attachment 28641
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Midwestern Power Armor looks exactly like something that would be designed in the post-war. It certainly doesn't look 1950s retro-esque, something the Fallout: Tactics developers even talked about:

View attachment 28644 View attachment 28643 View attachment 28642​

I mean just look at it, the mask looks like APA, the shoulder armor looks like T-51, perhaps the horns on the helmet could've been inspired by Black Devil Power Armor, the build of the suit is far more slim fit and agile-looking than the bulkiness of yesteryear's Powered Armor, all around it looks like an upgrade to everything we've seen.

I also think it's weird how this is the only explanation we get for why the Powered Armor looks so different in Fallout: Tactics:



I agree with this quote in that different technologies would exist out in the vast wasteland, but perhaps we could've gotten a reason with this. And while Fallout: Tactics is considered canon, it's very pick-and-choose with Bethesda, so it wouldn't have been surprising if this was how Midwestern Power Armor was reintroduced.

it looks Enclave to me.
Mainsteam Brotherhood. East and West, wears the same pattern power armor, one that easily distinguish them from the Enclave. the midwest... mmm. not much.

 

[cratchety ol joe]

I would redo the sprite of the Power Armor to make it more retro

Honestly... WHY does EVERYTHING have to 'look retro' I am super fed up with the 'Jetsonification' of Fallout, I want more Mad Max, less play-dough hyper-50's Americana.

I struggle to maintain that society/culture/ technology has progressed by essentially NOTHING over the course of 150 years, and YES I do understand alternate timeline/set-back of micro electronics etc but that setback was about 10-20 years of technological progression. so by the year 2200 (just about 'pre-war') we should 'expect' the world to have tech similar in scope to about 2150 ... so their 'pre-war' tech should by all rights still be ahead of what we have now!

And I get it, it's an aesthetic, but it wasn't this bad in the OG games, where are the neo-gothic/art deco cities? where are the shining sci-fi labs (even FO1 presented it's 'tech' as somewhat advanced in how it was shown...

</rant>

 

[Slaughter Manslaught]

I think when the enclave fled across the country in order for them to make repairs on the suits they jury rigged it with t45 and it led to it getting downgraded. That's my own idea at least

An interesting explanation, but I don't think it works because "Black Devil" looks mass-manufactured and new, not jury rigged and old.

I think the most logical explanation is that they had limited resources in Raven Rock and went with a "good enough" design. The X-series/APA was already going towards ceramics, with the MKI being ceramics + metal and APA MkII from FO2 being a new-gen ceramics-based suit. So they just did a simpler mass-manufactured 100% ceramics suits at the level of T-45 and went "good enough for govt-work". Then lied that it was better than the old APA, because "Our new suit is actually shittier and has no improvements over our old technology whatsoever, but hey at least we can make more" isn't exactly a morale raiser.

I mean, in 99% of cases, T-45d is already far superior to anything the average wasteland danger can wear or harm. What are the chances another highly-advanced organization moves into the Capital Wasteland?

Honestly... WHY does EVERYTHING have to 'look retro' I am super fed up with the 'Jetsonification' of Fallout, I want more Mad Max, less play-dough hyper-50's Americana.

I struggle to maintain that society/culture/ technology has progressed by essentially NOTHING over the course of 150 years, and YES I do understand alternate timeline/set-back of micro electronics etc but that setback was about 10-20 years of technological progression. so by the year 2200 (just about 'pre-war') we should 'expect' the world to have tech similar in scope to about 2150 ... so their 'pre-war' tech should by all rights still be ahead of what we have now!

And I get it, it's an aesthetic, but it wasn't this bad in the OG games, where are the neo-gothic/art deco cities? where are the shining sci-fi labs (even FO1 presented it's 'tech' as somewhat advanced in how it was shown...

</rant>

To be fair, in the Classic Fallouts, the Americana stuff was mostly meant to be pre-war. Pre-War stuff is retro, post-war is more Mad Max.

So if something is pre-war, it should look retro. Its the art style of Fallout.
Don't forget - just because it looks retro, doesn't mean it is primitive - a lot of Fallout-universe tech is straight out better than ours. Dudes have AI, Fusion Power and Powered Armor.

Also, computer-wise, Fallout also takes a lot from the 80s. Pre-Internet Corporate, Education and Military Intranets, no GUIs, Command Lines, Mainframes and Terminals, etc. They did have Terabyte-sized holodisks, so I suspect the innards of those computers were pretty advanced, actually. Just big and bulky.

 

[Hassknecht]

Honestly... WHY does EVERYTHING have to 'look retro' I am super fed up with the 'Jetsonification' of Fallout, I want more Mad Max, less play-dough hyper-50's Americana.

I struggle to maintain that society/culture/ technology has progressed by essentially NOTHING over the course of 150 years, and YES I do understand alternate timeline/set-back of micro electronics etc but that setback was about 10-20 years of technological progression. so by the year 2200 (just about 'pre-war') we should 'expect' the world to have tech similar in scope to about 2150 ... so their 'pre-war' tech should by all rights still be ahead of what we have now!

And I get it, it's an aesthetic, but it wasn't this bad in the OG games, where are the neo-gothic/art deco cities? where are the shining sci-fi labs (even FO1 presented it's 'tech' as somewhat advanced in how it was shown...

</rant>

I'd argue that, at least for the pre-war stuff, "Jetsons" is exactly the look they should go for. It's the quintessential "World of Tomorrow" view of the future they had in the 50s, which is what Fallout is set in. But I do agree that there should be more Mad Max, as Fallout also basically had the social decay, collapse, and apocalypse of Mad Max happening to that World of Tomorrow.

It's kinda hard to find actual illustrations and ideas from back then, as retrofuturism is all the rage now and all search results are muddled by modern interpretations and AI generated images. But one could probably dive pretty deep into the original ideas from back then and see how maybe the visions of the future were different from country to country, and from that also extrapolate how other countries than the US looked in the world of Fallout. Although Futurism back then was pretty unified, and all the artists around the world had kinda similar ideas and styles.
Also, Fallout's Great War was in 2077, not the 2200s.

 

[cratchety ol joe]

{snip}... Fallout's Great War was in 2077

Yeah, I goofed on the timeline, I was rant-typing ... But I'd still argue that puts the potential tech of pre-war fallout at LEAST akin to what we have now, if not a little more. I don't even per-se dislike the hyper-retro-futurism, but I do hate that somethings are pushed so hard (like valve driven computers being a 'norm', again- I point at FO 1 which showed that 'advanced' technology was what the 'normal' scientific and military establishments had available, as much as I would love to rag on FO4; the inside of the institute actually is one of the things I looked at and thought "yeah, this feels more like a vision of what the FO world would have as available tech"

But the beth-o-vision of FO is that tech progression /cultural identity/ design and form all just fukkn stopped at 1950's and made zero advancement.

So AFAIK the timeline diverges properly in a point just about the turn of the 60's I'd LOVE some of that 60's style sci-fi, or the 70's techno-futurist concepts, the three decades from the 60's through 80's saw MASSIVE cultural shifts, albeit somewhat liked to mass production industrialization, but I argue those shift should present themselves in FO in someway.

It's an alternate timeline, not a time-capsule directly booped into the future from the golden-era 'classic' sci-fi - I want to be able to find out about THAT timeline, THAT history, THOSE years that we in reality will never live. It's such a wasted potential of what-ifery.

Also I wish to apologise, this is HORRIBLY off topic at this point

Uhh, post war armour should be cool.

 

[Hassknecht]

Yeah, I goofed on the timeline, I was rant-typing ... But I'd still argue that puts the potential tech of pre-war fallout at LEAST akin to what we have now, if not a little more. I don't even per-se dislike the hyper-retro-futurism, but I do hate that somethings are pushed so hard (like valve driven computers being a 'norm', again- I point at FO 1 which showed that 'advanced' technology was what the 'normal' scientific and military establishments had available, as much as I would love to rag on FO4; the inside of the institute actually is one of the things I looked at and thought "yeah, this feels more like a vision of what the FO world would have as available tech"

But the beth-o-vision of FO is that tech progression /cultural identity/ design and form all just fukkn stopped at 1950's and made zero advancement.

So AFAIK the timeline diverges properly in a point just about the turn of the 60's I'd LOVE some of that 60's style sci-fi, or the 70's techno-futurist concepts, the three decades from the 60's through 80's saw MASSIVE cultural shifts, albeit somewhat liked to mass production industrialization, but I argue those shift should present themselves in FO in someway.

It's an alternate timeline, not a time-capsule directly booped into the future from the golden-era 'classic' sci-fi - I want to be able to find out about THAT timeline, THAT history, THOSE years that we in reality will never live. It's such a wasted potential of what-ifery.

Also I wish to apologise, this is HORRIBLY off topic at this point

Uhh, post war armour should be cool.

The valve-powered computers are due to how the world of Fallout is based on how the people of the 50s envisioned the future. They didn't really know transistors and miniaturisation yet, so they thought computers, while becoming immensely powerful, would always be huge mainframe-type machines, or at least bulky.

They'd envision complex integrated circuits inside thermionic valves, and maybe somewhat miniaturised valves like Nuvistors and such, but still rather old-fashioned from our point of view.
I do agree, though, that especially Bethesda has been leaning way too hard into the the 1950s style in general, forgetting that it actually takes place in the future and should look accordingly. And yeah, I did like the Institute's design as well, added a bit of actual futurism to the world.