Fighting off raiders, super mutants, not running out of batteries? I guess you could explain the battery as Cogsworh being solar powered, but how could Cogsworth alone, fend off attacks from scavengers? From what was shown at E3, your house looks virtually untouched. If wandering raiders can attack your settlements, how have they not attacked Cogsworth in 200 years?

i dunno magnum as someone come across very high lvl mr handys/gutsy in fallout 3/NV i can tell you plasma pistol/flamer they are packing would more than match for raiders. as for battery life if have anything like the power cell used in the t-51 power armour they be good for 100+ years in combat conditions so find not surprizing hes still kicking he not using anywere near the power since the family left him for the vault.

Codsworth probably runs on nuclear batteries so that probably won't be an issue for at least a few more hundred years. He's got weapons of his own, and I wouldn't be surprised if he could perform repairs and maintenance on himself.

Probably the same as any other robot we come across in the wastes. I mean, the real answer is plot armor, but it's not some infeasibility that he'd manage to make it 200 years.

Possibly, but the PC's house looks untouched. Surely by now, raiders or some group of scavengers would have made plans to assault your house, with visible signs of bullet holes or laser prints.

I also read that the Gamescom footage showed some raiders using Fatman's on the PC. Equipped for combat or not, not even a Mr. Handy can stand tall against a few mini nukes.

Those other robots are wandering around. Whereas Cogsworth remains in one location the whole time, I'm guessing. Cogsworth is a sitting duck just like any settlement you would create in the game that would inevitably be attacked. How can one robot fend off various attackers for 200 years, unscathed?

Who is Cogsworth?

SCIENCE!

Why would they bother looting a few sets of pre-war clothing or a 200-year old box of Sugar Bombs? Codsworth himself is probably the only thing in the house worth taking, and that's only possible if the one doing the looting could disable and reprogram him.

A 200 year old box of Sugar Bombs? The houses alone are reason enough for an assault. Why would raiders wait 200 years to attack Cogsworth? Within a year after the Great War, scavengers, raiders would have attacked that whole neighborhood. Possibly set up shop and consume all available resources within that perimeter.

At least there should be skeletons or signs of failed assaults in the streets of the PC's old neighborhood. You even saw this in The Walking Dead when they went house raiding in different neighborhoods. Raiders could have turned your own neighborhood into a settlement the same way the PC can create settlements.

Beth doesn't always think too deep into some of the finer details like this so it's best to just sweep it under rug and not think about it too hard.

because hes a robot and likely has a nuclear power source seriously other mr handys made it so clearly its not that hard.

He had some spare...cogs

Though most of the other Mr. Handys in previous games, were usually grouped together, scattered throughout a building or a vault. Whereas Cogsworth is all alone out in the open, in one location.

Because Todd Howard needed someone you know to explain the plot to you.

Pre-war Boston was made to accommodate far more people than were left over when the bombs fell; there's no way the immediate survivors could hope to reclaim even a fraction of that, and 200 years later, there still aren't enough people in the region to do so. Immediate survivors would have chosen more defensible locations with more supplies to loot (hospitals, supermarkets, urban neighborhoods), which given the pre-war population versus the post-war population, would probably last them a while. Later on, as the population of mole rats, radroaches, giant ants, wild dogs, and iguanas grew, looting for food became less necessary, while looting for medicine may have become less necessary due to post-nuclear flora.

He survived like any other robot in Fallout games.

Codsworth is a wizard and he cast an invisibility spell on all of whatever-that-place-is-called.

A raider wants shelter, food, ammo, water, alcohol, six, and a relieve to the boredom.

Knocking out an active securitron to get access to a Super-Duper Mart makes great sense.

Lot of loot for the risk.

Going after an active Mr Handy with a flamer and a circular saw in order to loot a house in the middle of no where for a box or two of sugar bombs, a few cans of food, and a bottle of vodka or two plus what ever else you can salvage from one house out of a subdivision is not in the same league.

Not to say that a raider or scavenger on a bad day wouldn't spend the bullets, but rather they would think twice about it.

Town and cities offer the chance for a lot more salvage than subdivisions.

see if think too hard this i come up with"how do all the computers still have power?" then i remember power generators at bottom ever building that still work and have whatever fuel they need too keep lights on.

see beth thinks of some things just not the whole package.

Either a micro fusion engine or a fission pile. They could last a very long time on a low power state. Nuclear is an awesome power source after all. As to Codsworth surviving it shouldn't be that difficult. Even the Mr Handy's can pack a small punch. I loved randomly pissing off mine in megaton. I am pretty sure raiders and the like don't appreciate a mechanical arm with a sawblade lopping off heads. And the built in flamethrower could create panic and death on a pretty good level as well.

I feel like a Mr. Handy outside of a random house in the suburbs would pique a lot of interest, namely, what is this robot guarding? I also feel like the explanation is simple enough as "he's a robot" for how he survived so long. I additionally feel like Bethesda is going to have growing regrets about making the time shift front and center in the game, simply because now everyone is going to have an awareness of the time passage and will view all events through that lens. Of course, maybe that is the point.