I could see having a backpack as a carried, external, container. (it would have to be scripted.) Putting things in the backpack would make them inaccessible during the normal course of events, so, if you wanted something out of it, you would have to stop, drop the pack, open it, grab what you wanted, pick it back up. Etc. Wearing the backpack could just drop a token into your inventory, with weight of the token based on the amount o' stuff in the pack. (I did something like this for oblivion..... backpack would make things 'easier to carry', that was reflected by a somewhat reduced weight.)

It really wouldn't be that difficult.

You mean like the backpack in Don't Starve?

What's Don't Starve?

It's on steam. Survival game where you are dropped in the middle of a wilderness, and must...well...Not Starve, while also surviving the terrain and creatures while trying to find a way out of the wilds.

One of the items, the backpack, is an equipable item that adds...10 or 8 extra inventory slots, and can be dropped with the items inside. Because you can either have armor, or the backpack, never both.

Hhhmmm..... Why wouldn't you be able to wear a backpack over your armor? Powered Armor, I can see it might be a bit of an ordeal simply getting it on.... but, things like the armored vault suit, or leather armor? Should be a snap.

Game mechanics, probably. It being a trade off; greater protection or greater inventory capacity.

**It's funny (to me), that whenever I think of PC inventory I think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rom_%28comics%29, and his always accessible interdimendional closet where he keeps all his stuff hidden.

(ROM would seemingly really pull his guns out like a GTA parody.)

That was just sort of the trade off in that game, because I guess it was coded that only one item could occupy your chest slot.

a man who can build a power suite and build a sniper rifle out of a pistol cant fix a car?

It's the most ridiculous thing yet. No PC should be able to build (or even repair) a power suit.

The PCs [adventurers] are by definition pinch-hitting jack-of-all-trades. A PA suit should require quite an esoteric specialist ~with the tools for it.

I like the idea that a backpack would add extra inventory space that was inaccessible until you dropped the pack and accessed it.

However, I personally feel that the only way that would make sense is if your inventory space was actually limited - as in, when you've picked up a certain amount of weight the game just tells you you can't pick up any more. When was that last in a Bethesda openworld-action/rpg game? Ah, right. Oblivion. Not Skyrim, and not FO3.

I suppose a backpack could just raise your encumbrance, at the cost of having items in it inaccessible, but that sort of seems too easy. Perhaps it could raise you encumbrance, but when you hit your original limit you're slowed to a jog. Then to a walk when you hit the new limit. That'd work... but it'd look really weird if there wasn't a suitable animation in the game.

[edit]

Some of the Star Trek fps games had a nice visual effect, where weapons not in use were dematerialised and stored in a personal pattern buffer (for "pattern buffer" read "wibbly wobbly quantum jiggery-pokery gibberish" ). Whenever you switched weapons one would vanish in a lot of sparkles and the next would appear.

Nice use of existing in-universe gibberish

Oh, I love scavenging, looting, stripping ruins down to the floorboards.... I just prefer Looks Cool? to Looks Believable? (with both of those things being quite subjective to start with...)

Some people like that look (hence, the TES mods that let you draqe your character in dozens of straps/bags/sheathes). Some don't. That's why an optional cosmetic backpack/etc would be nicer than an Absolutely Required backpack (i.e, the one which is the only reasonable way for you to increase your carrying capacity)

But, wouldn't having a separate window/tab external to the pip boy for inventory be largely cosmetic?
Granted, it is just UI cosmetics, and not character model cosmetics. Still the same kind of thing, IMO.

I'm sure there will be mods, for this all though.
Not just backpacks, but since we do have a vehicle now, couldn't the "elevation" and model for the vertibird be modded to include land based vehicles? -so sayeth the guy who has never made or used mods.

It'd be sad if they did it that way.

Backpacks and sacks should be inventory items with item collections in them; lost when dropped, acquired when picked up.

Any land based vehicle should react to (and be restricted by) the terrain.

What I meant was how in the originals how you bring up the inventory and pip boy separately- that it is largely cosmetic.
It would be nice to be able to stash a sack of inventory in a place of our choosing, though.

I agree on this. Would it be an impossibility to do so utilizing what we are given for the vertibirds, though?

Short answer - no

Long answer - a land based vehicle has to track the ground reasonably closely in order to look halfway good, and that is hard. It was just about possible to sort of cludge it in FO3, using various workarounds none of which were ideal. In Skyrim, because of changes to the way scripting worked, the only feasible solution was to either have a cart, going not much faster than a horse's walking speed, or have a car-shaped horse (which is an ingenious solution, but really didn't look all that good), or a piece of car-shaped player clothing.

FO4 will certainly have the same scripting system as Skyrim, so trying to get a flying vehicle (a vertibird) to hug the ground closely enough to look like a land vehicle... you just won't be able to adjust it's height on the fly quickly enough.

So we're either back to having a rideable animal shaped like a vehicle, a piece of clothing for the player shaped like a vehicle, or maybe an entirely physics based vehicle. Trying to get a physics-based vehicle to travel at speed without flipping over will be very challenging (I suspect impossible, but we'll see). Getting one going slowly (faster than a player running, but not much faster) will be challenging, but should be do-able. IF we're able to get new models into the game. We might not.

[disclaimer] - I'd be delighted to learn of any way this was sorted in Skyrim which I'm not aware of

i believe i remember tom howard saying the only vehicle will be the vertibird

Well, boo. Possibly.
I am really looking forward to mods coming to console. way i figure it, if i can get a few thousand hours out of the base game and DLC, as with other recent FO titles, I should be able to meta game through mods indefinitely.

In fallout 3 I like to hoard items and tend to be over encumbered a lot. ...

If I had a backpack I could fill up and put it on, and I would walk around over encumbered. .. but when I need to fight, I could drop the pack and fight the super mutants, unencumbered.

Collect their gear put it in the pack and continue my slow trek through the wastes.

But like I said I wouldn't mind if the backpack was Just an equippable item the increase strength 5%

And as for vehicles what's wrong with a military version of giddyup buttercup the robotic horse..

it can trek the wasteland off road it would be slow enough the you don't fly through game speaking of flying it looks like the power suit can fly or maybe just slow fall

The pipboy was the only physical interface for the PC. Technically they carried it, but it could not be taken away.

The other UIs were representational constructs. They were meant to appear indicative of various machinery in the world. The Barter UI was meant to appear like a trading board [table]... as in, "bring items for trade to the table"... it didn't mean there was one (present), but it imparts the idea and concept.

In the original games, you could open a bag and see what was in it. You could also trade a bag with a companion; or leave it somewhere.

The best I can envision for backpacks and sacks in the current design of their take on the series, is a drop-able container that you can add or remove items from, and then put it in inventory as a standard item on the list in the Pipboy, or (better), have the sack or backpack always worn on the model when carried, and the pipboy inventory option is the option to drop it.

I am using a slavers corpse as a duffle bag to get across the bridge in the pit to bring my items home to Megaton

There is a bus in the middle of the bridge do you can't get around while overencumbered...

So I thew the body over the bus and picked him up on the other side and made it to the exit of the pit


It would be cool to take your backpack off and throw it over an obstacle then go over there and grab your backpack again.

And the ability to drop all your items at once except for what you have equipted is a lifesaver

I'm a big fan of this idea. And would lover to see it in a future patch. It probably won't be in the base game

Hah! I hadn't thought of that. Now that would be interesting. Maybe you could find it standing somewhere out in the wilderness with a dead alien and deathclaw nearby (deathclaw jumped alien, buttercup eye-lasered deathclaw)

I'm completely with you. I don't use PA either.

Carry weight is based on strength until the "wider audience" complains, and you can carry the weight of the earth because carry weight is nostalgic and for old men(even though men and women of varying ages enjoy TES games).

I don't think they would make the stuff that are in your backpack inaccessible, it's just not their style. I am in favor of them being a trade of though:
+ Carryweight
- Agility

It's simple and makes sense.

I would also like to see them do duffle bags and pouches,, backpacks are fairly popular mods of previous games.