"We've got an old suit of power armor stashed in the basemant next door, but can't get to it with all these raiders around - could you, Mr. Protagonist, fight your way through the sewer access, pop this power cell my scouts just returned with into it, and Save The Day, while we guard the civilians in this building?"

(or any of a dozen other variants of Mission Text that I've seen in a dozen games before.....)

Assuming the PC had pre-war training in PA then? I could understand that.

I just hope the PA is not accessible to anybody now, training or no training.

You know, skimpy power armors. They must have had those, surely!

It already was, even in Fallout 3 one can find a Enclave outpost that was taken over by raiders, and the raiders are wearing the PA, and they are set to spawn that way.

Power is and was, by design, in all Fallout games, supposed to be usable by anyone, with no training at all. IIRC, there's even some note or something in Fallout 3 that power armor was supposed to be so easy ot use, even children could do it.

The E3 videos show some raider armor getting blasted off, and under it we can see the power armor exoskeleton, so raiders are using at least salvaged power armor in Fo4.

Then I was misinformed - I thought PA required special training which was a closly guarded secret by the BoS and obviously the Enclave. I thought that was established in Fallout 1 lore.

Never mind then.

well if ya wanna be effective right off the bat, but just because there is training, doesn′t mean ya couldn′t learn via trial and error.

edit: like driving a car, it helps to go to a driving school, but theoratically a total driving novist could with time learn him/herself to drive anyhow.

Like in the film edge of tomorrow with cage learning to use the exoskeleton.

I have never liked power armor and I especially did not being yelled at by some moron who's face I needed badly to stab. Instead saying to the screen "Didums you [censored]."

Power armor is ugly and bulky..

At least this time it is also useful with the jetpacks.. I will actually wear it this time.

I have zero issue with the absence of the moron who said a few insulting words with a blackout screen for the "training"

Well prepare to be disappointed then, as Preston Garvey is very early in the game. Think of it as how other games will occasionally give a person endgame gear or powers early on as a tease for what is to come. As for your second question, who is to say Preston Garvey knows how to use power armor?

He is a military veteran and the likelihood he is proficient in power armor is very high. As others have suggested, it will likely be an early tease and then we'll need to build the suit back up as the game progresses.

Fallout 4 skimy power armor mods will be here sooner than you think.

Paladin Gunny? Yeah, he was a punk. Honestly, I did not like the way power armor was learned in the base Fallout 3 game at all. Having to go through most of the story and then go to a black out screen was pretty underwhelming. I would have preferred some obstacle course or level of training involved instead of "you are the lone wanderer and the greatest person ever, lets just give you everything."

Yes he was.. I always gave my power armor to Charon.. An excellent follower..

I agree about the training..

At least the circumstances for which we appear to get power armor (early in the game helping Preston Garvey) is more engaging and a bit more exciting. Hopefully the suit is rendered useless after the encounter and then we'll need to rebuild it. I'm curious what other capabilities power armor will possess beyond jump jet functionality, if there's anything else. It would be kind of interesting to use power armor to clear debris, survive in highly-irradiated environments, or use it for other purposes to progress through the game.

If they didn't the Nexus will provide it....believe me.

I'm betting on day 2 after release =)

Hmm, I know that someone made "female" PA (just proportioned differently), but I'm not sure if anyone made revealing PA. (Since PA was just a different set of stats, it's easy enough to make a regular bikini outfit or business suit have the same stats as PA, so the only reason to try to make actual skimpy PA would be as a joke. I mean, I've seen a mod with a pair of thigh-high leather boots that added +50 carry weight, fire resistance, and water breathing. )

(hmm, Nexus seems to be running uber-slow or is down. Can't check.)

http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/Power-bikini.jpg

I actually wouldn't mind seeing a wider variety of purposes for power armor, besides the common variants we know and are familiar with. I think there is a lot of opportunities for BGS to create some really interesting and unique game play experiences with power armor depending on how its built and used. It doesn't just need to be a vehicle of mass destruction, but should be able to accommodate a multitude of roles for people. Heck, I think it would be awesome if you could use power armor as a temporary generator to help power a small town for people to have electricity until you find a more permanent solution.

The orignial ones had a powercell that would last 100 years... So they should all be dead/nonfunctional. One assumes [hopefully] that the PC has to use a modified replacement power source to get them to work.

More than likely. I'm sure this is something the SS could acquire from the BoS or any other faction that may have power armor and has the means of powering it. Honestly, I'm quite curious how the game play is going to change with power armor being so powerful now. Killing enclave soldiers wasn't a big deal in Fallout 3, even the ones using tesla power armor. It might be a bit different in Fallout 4 if you are taking on a squad of BoS knights clad in power armor aiming gatlin guns your direction. I suppose that's why we have a fat man though.

I'm just glad the armor is back to the way it's supposed to be.

*I wish the Fatman wasn't in the game though; or at least only having a round or two, and that it was a town killer, rather than a gag weapon.

I definitely do believe this change was for the better with respect to power armor. It should add a lot more variety to game play, especially when people are getting towards endgame.

I actually would prefer if the fat man had larger limitations, yet a more destructive punch. I honestly never even use the thing to be quite honest. I rarely use grenades. I just blow everything to bits with my plasma rifle. It would be nice if the fat man could cause sheer havoc on the environment, but there would be so few mini nukes around that people would have to use it sparingly.

It bothered me that using it indoors didn't destroy the house. I would have preferred its use in the game to have been like Megaton itself, had the PC used it from atop Ten Penny Tower.

So you don't want it to be a gag weapon, but you want it to be a weapon that's ultimately unusable in every situation one would normally use a weapon?

THAT is a gag weapon defined right there.

Agreed. These tactical nukes honestly should be able to level a vast area compared to the primitive, dirty bombs the United States used against the Empire of Japan at the end of WWII, which leveled a significant portion of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

I want these nuclear weapons to actually be... nuclear weapons. It's a weapon of mass destruction of an unparalleled magnitude. A small mushroom cloud with some radiation afterwards hardly does justice what a tactical nuke is actually capable of, especially since these would have been made 130 years after WWII.

The only nukes in Fallout 1&2 wiped out the whole map where they exploded. (And were treated with bit of irony, in that the weapon that almost destroyed the country, was then used [twice] to save it.)

Yes. As in to wipe out an area like Paradise Falls, or Canterbury Commons, or Rivet City ~outright.

*A gag weapon, is to have a nuclear rifle intended to shoot a target across the street; and doubly so that the target can survive the hit).

Honestly, those are the only kinds of nukes I'd want in Fallout. Anything else just isn't realistic and is quite ridiculous. We have missile launchers. As it stands, the fat man is just a more deadly missile launcher. It should absolutely annihilate an entire area. It would be interesting if you had to fly up in a vertibird and then drop the mini nuke from above to decimate an area.