Ooo you just gave me an idea for a future mod...

An interesting theory. However, in the E3 demo there are clips of a ghouls armor shattering around the shoulder. Not that this puts to rest the theory as Bethesda could decide to treat power armor completely different, but its likely that armor in FO4 could visually degrade as is loses durability (assuming there is durability).

I hope so. I really like the idea of degrading armor. It's a really cool idea that they really didn't have to do.

Power Armor will probably be acquired the same way it's been acquired for all the previous FO games excluding New Vegas with the Remmants requirement. It'll involve the Brotherhood Of Steel.

I hope obtaining the power armor is side quest related and has nothing to do with the main story arch.

judging by the level of the demo player, it looks like its intended to be a recomended low level destination. Whether the game with quest mark you towards it or not is unknown, but not unlikely.

I don't think it will be, which is why I think this theory is pretty solid. Main reason is, customizing the armor seems to be a major feature of the game now, and with the way Bethesda has approached game design lately, I feel as though something so integral will be a part of the main questline. Now, getting additional parts for your power armor will probably fill a major side quest(s) on its own, but the base armor will almost certainly be picked up as you play, and I'd imagine it will be early on.

I hope it is early on at least. I am fuzzy on the details of Fallout 3's main quest, but I feel as though I completely missed the ability to wear power armor because I never interacted with the right people in the Brotherhood of Steel on my first playthrough. I feel as though I didn't even get to the BoS on my first playthrough... but I felt like they were integral to the main quest... weren't they? Too lazy to look it up, but I would really like to get introduced to the power armor early on and then have incremental improvements as I invest in it. Almost like a subset of character development or something.

No matter how we get the first one.. the fun thing is that there will still be more to collect. I think we saw 3 or 4 different power armors being constructed in the video. So even if we get a power armor early, it probably means the ones we collect later will be better than the first. I'm hoping we can also mix and match parts as they all have unique features and end up being able to cobble together an ultimate power armor out of all the other ones.

I think you're right about how we get Power Armor, but methinks it won't be scripted how dinged up it will get in combat; if I can make it through Concord without taking heavy damage, I should be able to wear that puppy into my next quest too.

What will really be the limiting factor is the fusion cell. So we'll start early on with a t-45d model, and we'll only be able to kick ass with it if we can keep finding power sources for it. That is, until we get late enough into the game to start getting later models that don't need power supplies. Hopefully the fusion cell has other uses, like in recipes for settlement building, so that they retain their usefulness later on and we have to decide whether or not we really want to power our t-45d in the early game.

if E3 is to go by, if ya go in the right direction youll get the PA we saw at lvl 2