TBH Bethesda only once defied the Fallout Bible, by NOT making D.C a one huge crater on the surface of the earth - Atleast as long I'm aware.

Which is my point, they don't consider themselves beholden to it if they want to make up something themselves. Not having D.C. as a crater, but rather, a relatively intact area of the country is precisely the point. If someone at a meeting comes up with an idea, I can't imagine anyone's going to pipe up, "Uh actually in the Fallout Bible it says this", can you?

was D.C. called a giant crater in the Bibles?

The bible doesn't stop Bethesda, but CA made it non-canon anyways so it didn't limit Bethesda's space to work with. They still reference it though, as there's a developer diary with Todd Howard citing the bible as source material, and http://www.duckandcover.cx/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15867&start=40.

Oh I'm sure that they might occasionally consult it for reference, same as the zeppelin in Fallout 4 was most certainly inspired by Fallout: Tactics of which the status of they have also been rather nebulous about.

According to the Fallout Bible, D.C was blasted to oblivion (like much of the eastern shore), eradicated frome the surface of the earth etc. While Capital Westland in F3 is relatively intact ;D But it is the one and only so far exception from FB in F3. Except that, Beth did more than fine in their lore research for F3 - As long as my opinion goes, anyway.

That and they added the fact that FEV research also took place in Vault 87 rather than Mariposa, which indicates that the US Government forcibly took the research from West-Tel (the largest pre-war military contractor) to oversee the research themselves but then also gave it to Vault-Tec? Seems rather incongruous to me. I don't think that Bethesda really care about the Bible, and rightly so in my opinion.

Where better to keep your super soldier serum besides in a super secure bunker you knew was able to survival a direct atomic blast?

Anyways, by the time of the war, Vault-Tec was basically nothing more then a division of the U.S. government. The entire upper management, and even the assigned overseers, were all "in" on the "super secret" vault experiment. The government giving Vault-Tec FEV is basically the government giving itself FEV.

Vault Tec, West Tek, Poseidon Energy, and many others were all part of the same super conspiracy to some degree.

If they didn't, they wouldn't have used it IMO.

Which is exactly my problem with the whole stupid "conspiracy" affair. West-Tek were the one's who made power armour, were the one's who really pioneered the development of energy weapons IIRC. And they weren't part of the "conspiracy", they didn't have any good lobbyists? In Fallout 1 it is made clear, that they US Army nationalised the whole project from them to conduct the research in their own purpose built facility at Mariposa. But now apparently (which was built to be nuke proof or at-least top-secret, hence the creation of the BoS which came from that facility to found thier organisation) they gave some to Vault-Tec apparently as-well.

I really don't have too much of a problem with it except as kind of evidence that Bethesda isn't too concerned about what the Bible says.

Terminals in Vault 87 state that the Vault 87 team was under Mariposa's watch, noting that Mariposa, along with Vault-Tec, was putting a great deal of pressure on them. It wasn't like Vault-Tec just let them have it without West-Tek still being in charge of it.

Its also generally a good idea to have multiple teams working on the same project at different locations, to increase the changes of one team finding a working virus, without falling into the trap of one team's results inflicting bias in the other.

I don't really see how that somehow makes Bethesda not care about the bible.

And doesn't that indicate that Vault 87 was occupied and sealed prior to the Great War even occurring? IIRC the Overseer notes that they are being pressured for results from Mariposa. So was Vault 87 closed months before the bombs even dropped? The whole thing just seems rather silly to me.

Also, considering that the Bible established the Vaults as social experiments (as-well as Fallout 2), it seems rather incongruous with the rest of the series in that regard don't you think?

The bible also established Vaults like ones that make people go crazy with gas, not really a "social experiment" now is it?

Well yeah, my point entirely really. The Bible is inconsistent and [censored]. They also said the social experiment thing and then said that Vault 12 was a test of radiation in the same sentence. Whole thing's wack IMO and shouldn't be considered by Bethesda.

Fallout lore is wack by itself, or should we go over what makes a ghoul again?

The Bible is no less inconsistent then the games themselves are, disregarding everything in it, when a lot of it can be used as good ideas for future games, or extra details to fill out the lore, is rather wasteful.

Didn't Avellone outright say on Twitter that the Fallout Bible isn't even canon any more in the first place?

As for Advanced Power Armor, there's plenty of ways to justify its presence in 4 without the Enclave being a major faction. Hell, it could be the Institute manufacturing the armor now. The fact that it looks more like Fallout 2's Enclave Armor compared to Fallout 3's is most likely just a shift in art direction; a lot of things in Fallout 4 look more in line with the art direction of the original games.

Doesn't appear to be how it works in Fallout 4 though I guess we can see. All the power armours have Mk/letter values that we can upgrade between and probably provide increased Defence values or something.

Like in Fallout Shelter you can get three designations of "X" power armour and they are all identical.

Yeah, I think Tesla and Hellfire models will be separate from the X-01 models. Maybe Tesla is X-02, and Hellfire is X-03? Makes me wonder if there are some new Power Armor models we haven't seen yet, too, other than T-60.

Say, what's the deal with T-60 Power Armor anyway? Did the Brotherhood invent it for themselves after the events of Fallout 3?

He said the bible isn't canon, but then Bethesda said they used it anyways, making everything they used canon,.

And Feargus Urquhart mentioned the Bibles as a one of the things they gave Bethesda/Bethesda had to use to make Fallout 3, so even Obsidian's CEO recognizes its there to be used.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/interviews/7500-Feargus-Urquhart-Comes-Home.2

TE: When Bethesda was doing its rounds with Fallout 3, they talked a lot about how they weren't consulting with the original Black Isle team and how they wanted to make it their Fallout, and they weren't too concerned with the past. How has that shifted now? You guys are essentially taking responsibility for the Vegas portion and extending the original Fallout 1 & 2 storylines. How has that integration worked out?

FU: It's like thinking of a Star Wars game. We could run everything by Lucas, but there's ... all these things and - you just get to know it.

For Star Wars, that's what Chris Avellone did, he's the designer for Knights of the Old Republic 2. He literally just went and read everything. I mean everything - I mean really bad junior Jedi books. I'm like "Why are you reading that?" and he says "Well, there might be something in here."

When it comes to Fallout, and what's easy for the internal team, they have all of our design documents, they have all of our materials, they have the games, they had Chris's Fallout bible, they had all this stuff. Would it have been helpful to ask five or six questions, but that would have probably been it.

Yeah I see what you mean but I'm going off of a few things with this. For one the x01 is equal to the T when giving the armor a name and the mark would be equal to the number. The second thing is that the enclave power armor in fallout shelter mark VI is given the description of "The most advanced power armor crafted by human hands." Considering the hellfire was the highest tier and latest armor produced by the enclave then it should be consider the most advanced power armor currently created.

Do only I have a feeling that in F4 We gonna see every kind of power armor? T45, T51 (both standard and midwestern variant), T60, X01, X02 (F3 Enclave armor?) and X03 (Hellfire?)? Tesla variant could be a upgrade for the armors.

All six of them look exactly the same though. Not to mention all other power armors in Fallout Shelter have six variants as well. And I don't think they had each variant be a completely different looking power armor for those sets. Even more so considering power armor like Hellfire isn't a variant of the advanced power armor, it's an entirely different set.

Another thing to consider is that the Enclave power armor in Fallout 3 is technically referred to as advanced power armor Mk II, which we clearly see in Fallout 4 looking like http://i.imgur.com/paG5QRZ.jpg.

Again, I think it's all just a case of retcon and the Enclave power armor of Fallout 3 no longer exist. Which I find appropriate enough because the armor design looks too much like the Midwestern Brotherhood.

Wasn't it made to look like the MWBoS armor on purpose?

I always assumed it was.

Also, dont forget, The Enclave has outposts in Chicago.

Is the midwestern armor even canon? I haven't played through tactics but I can't even find mention of them ever getting that armor, they just seem to have it.

IIRC, it was mentioned by someone, I think the Tactics devs, that the MWBoS armor was based off of a pre-war civilian model of power armor that the MwBoS re-purposed.

*edit* my bad, it was the canned Falloutd20 game that mentioned that.

The real world reason why it looks different is that originally Interplay planned to give them the backup disks that contained the Fallout 1/2 PA spirtes, but the disks were faulty, and the data couldn't be pulled from them, so they just made up a new PA sprite.