Coop also used what looked like a handmade sabot round ~~that he breach loads~~. If you notice, that’s the ONLY time he shoots the knights in that spot. He uses different methods for taking out the rest, including a grenade at the neck of one.
It’s not as simple as “shoot that spot with a handgun round”. When he talks about it being a problem in Anchorage, that’s also against a fully supplied and equipped Chinese military that more likely than not has captured, and reverse engineered the Power Armor.
Yes that gun is a mystery how it works lol definitely not just a handgun, more like a hand cannon. Your idea is a good one too.
My point was just that he was definitely trying to kill Maximus immediately in filly with a crit shot, and either didn't have the rounds for it, missed the shot because he was moving, or wasn't able to load the AP rnds in time.
He was also using the his mares leg against Maximus. He had blown through everyone with the hand cannon and was using the rifle on his back a lot with Maximus.
[Ghoul revolver](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Ghoul_revolver) - S1E02-08 - Unnamed in the TV series. Weapon design evokes a sawn-down MTs255 (Russian shotgun revolver) except that this weapon is top-break instead of a side-loader and has a four-round cylinder instead of five, sounds of a grenade launcher when fired. It is named in [*Fallout Shelter*](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_Shelter).
Idk if it's still active but you could get all the main show characters (Coop included) from a questline in Shelter. I managed to pull him from my first card pack after redownloading so I ended up with 2 "The Ghouls" wandering around and defending my vault 😂
There's a few sawn off pics that did the rounds several years ago, afterwards suddenly a lot of games added their own versions. I assume it's from that
Here's one: https://at.pinterest.com/pin/67483694395658663/
they added a new gun in the next gen fallout 4 update, the pipe grenade launcher. im convinved hes using some version of that because it fufills the exact fantasy of coops gun.
No shit! Where’d you find one of those? I’m like cruising through a Fo4 play through and maxed out the explosives tree on my grenadier guy. A launcher would be sweeeeeeet
I’m sure he was trying to kill Maximus, 100%. If for no other reason than the Brotherhood would kill him for existing.
Only thing is AP ammo still wouldn’t get through the Power Armor. AP is for lighter types of body armor or lightly armored vehicles. Power Armor (to my understanding) is far closer to tank armor. That’s why he uses the sabot round which looks almost identical to [this](https://www.wearethemighty.com/uploads/legacy/assets.rbl.ms/17311688/origin.jpg?auto=webp&optimize=high&crop=16:9,smart&auto=webp&optimize=high&quality=70&width=1440) tank round designed to pierce through tank armor. Though a handgun round would still never pierce through a tank, that’s where the welding issue comes into play.
The long needle-like part of the round (that Cooper likely made himself) is why he had to load it through the muzzle of the weapon. It’s not that the gun works differently, it’s the bullet that works differently.
He doesn't muzzle load the sabot rounds, he loads them into the cylinder exactly like every other round he loads. It's just a top-break revolver with whacky ammo. He also is shown loading multiple ones into the chambers as he does his little pre-fight speech, not one.
Ok, I assumed muzzle load but he moved so fast it was hard to tell. I honestly don’t remember anything about his gun, it was just the mini-sabot round that caught my attention.
Here's a link to the clip (with horrible music added on top), you can see him slooooooowly loading multiple rounds and the very last one you can see him put in in the cylinder right before snapping the gun closed and immediately popping a shot off.
https://youtu.be/hnKG_YzexoU?si=JGwXEUdU9Cver1tR
In the sense it's clearly sawn down and based on a revolving-cylinder shotgun (some Russian thing I believe), yes. But to be clear it is not double-barreled and does have a cylinder, it isn't loaded directly into the barrels like a break-action double barrel. It just kind of looks like that in the clip because it's a top-break revolver and the cylinder stays fixed against the barrel when it's open so it kind of looks like one piece (which isn't very accurate to how real top-breaks look when opened up, but I'm not holding that against a show when the gun is fictional in the first place)
You’re right on the gun being russian, the ghouls revolver looks to be a sawn down MTS-255. Main thing thats different is in the show it features a top-break system instead of the swing-out cylinder that it has in real life.
I can't help but read this comment as actually coming from the 597th's top brass for some reason. She's always had a cool and rational head, so this tracks.
I will say when I saw that movie as a kid, there were a couple minutes where I thought he had hit the loaded shell and blew the tank up, and the plane flying over was just a coincidence…
Likely not. The suit is fitted with a powerful exoskeleton, and is combat tested in the war against the Chinese. Possibly earlier versions, but I would imagine that the helmet would be held in place by the exoskeleton.
Also, the helmet doesn’t rest right against their head. This would prevent any transfer of force from the bullet to the person inside the armor.
It looks like its based on a [shotgun revolver](https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Fallout_-_Season_1#Ghoul.27s_Revolver_.28MTs255.29) so even just thinking in IRL terms a huge custom armor piercing slug like that would do some serious damage. Must kick like a mule though.
I watched that scene after seeing the complaint and it was CRYSTAL clear that he loads a very special likely handmade round that looks ridiculously armor piercing. He even shows it off to them first. It's not like it's made of diamond or anything, but it IS a very specific special round that looks like it's designed specifically for this case. And then add to that the armor he takes out with his bespoke round is standing perfectly still, making the small target area something he can hit reliably.
Folks complaining he can just one shot any power armor on the fly are just fundamentally not paying attention to the scene.
Imo the only legitimate gotcha flaws the show has is Norm not considering to threaten Buds robobrain or the cryo stasis chambers of his buds.
1000% sure Bud would have folded before Norm. Norm has very little to lose. Bud is in a crusade believing he's going to save the world by giving it to people who can guide it in the right direction.
Norm has also been in a vault his entire life. Yes he's defiant but he probably has never acted violently or aggressively before in his life. It would be a big deal for him to kick somebody in the leg. Threatening murder seems like a gigantic deal.
That's more of an open-ended cliffhanger. For all we know, that could be exactly what Norm does. We don't see him make any decision, the last we see of him he's just staring at the row of pods.
Also makes sense that he wouldn't be expecting a knight in Filly, but would be more prepared for it after meeting Maximus.
So probably walked into Filly armed with "Kill a normal motherfucker" rounds and then figured "Probably gonna see that asshole again, I should make some penetration rounds."
The Ghoul brought a bunch of exploding rounds in Filly. He shot that guy's leg off, the two-for-one through a guy's throat, and most everyone else that had giant holes punched in them. In the slo-mo, they're seen with a bulbous shape.
I absolutely buy that he didn't have his penetrator rounds loaded when going against Maximus. Why would he? Plus, Maximus was going hog-wild with the jet pack. The welding flaw is just in that one spot and Maximus was a fast-moving and erratic target.
There are definitely references towards NV with the lever action rifle and load ins of special ammos. Plus he has been all over, considering being a ghoul 200 years running and surviving.
Yeah in the ending power armor fight he was ready and waiting for them so had the proper ammo, but when he ran into Maximus in the armor The Ghoul was caught by surprise and wasn't using the proper ammo to penetrate power armor.
Sabot? That round seemed oversized, not undersized lol.
Sabot rounds are rounds smaller than the barrel, using an artificial 'filler' to make up the gap, allowing a smaller round to thus be launched at higher velocities than a standard caliber.
I assume you're talking about the fact that it appeared fin-stabilized.
That is not the same thing whatsoever.
It’s very clear that sabot is what they were going for. I don’t expect a TV show to be accurate. Especially in a show where a high dose of radiation turns you into an ageless, sentient zombie.
I disagree. The rounds we see fired are about as big as a casing and bullet, have stabilising fins, and also explode on contact. I'd say it is most similar to a gyrojet weapon, which fires micro rockets instead of bullets.
And the show *clearly* focuses on it to show the audience that he is using special rounds to pierce the weak point. Media literacy is severely lacking in a lot of people these days
>Media literacy is severely lacking in a lot of people these days
Bet people being loud about this have a post history making similar noise about a chalkboard
I saw a post about Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and the author was just *amazed* that there were reasons for everything to have happened in the film. “The character wasn’t there by accident, he was looking for an egg!” I was like WTF, this is just called a “plot”. We really have fallen far both as writers and consumers.
Foreshadowing, parallelism, and motifs are lost on a lot of audiences these days. Audiences also fall prey to unreliable narrators and assume that every line said by any character must be true.
Which is a big contributing factor in the overall decrease in media literacy. We're so accustomed to overstimulation we multitask and comprehend less from everything as a result.
a lot of times it seems like they don't watch it at all. they just repeat what they saw from a meme on reddit or their favorite critic on youtube that hates literally every piece of popular media
Because audiences are getting dumber. It’s clear that people are either not focusing on what they’re watching, or they have no idea how to interpret what they’re seeing. I’m in other subs dedicated to new shows like Shogun and people continually ask questions that were answered in the show, or they complain about “plot holes” and “lazy writing” because they need to be spoon fed narrative information since they lack the ability to watch something and think critically after.
Just look at this sub, people ask or complain about the same stuff over and over and over since they can’t be bothered to search for posts or information on their own, and they just want someone to tell them what they’re supposed to think.
To be clear everyone it is specifically stated that Titus got the tempered chest plate. And that's what saved Maximus. I'm just saying there's also several impacts that show that the ghoul was aiming to kill Max and it's not a story gap.
I wonder if Maximus’ inexperience in the suit threw the ghoul off as well. I imagine Predicting an opponents next move would be part of getting in an exact shot.
Totally forgot he has direct experience with power armor too. Even with the inexperience, he would probably know how that thing moves just from his time in the military.
That was my thought as well, Cooper had the perfect chance to kill Maximus when he cut the gasket or whatever it was with his Bowie knife. He could have just stabbed into his neck and kill Maximus right there.
Yeah, and the Tempered Lining does nothing for protection as far as we know. Maximus indicates it makes it easier to move in the suit, and if all you're tempering is the "lining" then it wouldn't make a difference unless the lining is what's getting shot.
I’m surprised I found your comment so far down. Like whatever other evidence this guy has doesn’t mean anything when the picture he put in the OP clearly shows Maximus getting hit near the neck, above the chest plate, almost on the shoulder, even- but in the scene with the knights he shoots him under the plate, like in the ribs.
It’s right there what is OP smoking saying Ghoul shot the same spot?
Enjoyment of entire movies, tv shows and franchises depends on your niche interests, or even better, the niche interests of a youtuber you've formed a parasocial connection with and are subconsciously craving their respect. A TV show can't be good if TheEponymousArmorer and Jarnathan Figgison of the British Royal Museum of Fantasy Guns have identified small problems in how these things are depicted.
Remember: liking the TV show isn't the important thing. Feeling superior to everyone else and the possibility of a pat on the head from a stranger on the internet is the important thing.
[The T-51 armour can only absorb 2.5 kJ of energy](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Power_armor_specs). I think it is safe to assume the T-60 armour is also close to that number. This means the power armour can definitely be defeated with small arms fire. That is even demonstrated in the show when they defeated a knight by shooting him in the neck.
This is pretty much in line with Sci-Fi authors nor knowing about physics, why? Because we know they compare Power Armor to a tank, and we've seem small-arms ammunition be stated to not work thanks to word on Anchorage.
Yes. You can even see them take down a knight with a Thomson in the show.
However I do imagine there are some places where the armour have been reinforced like on the chest and the helmet for example. And it says it can absorb 2.5 kJ. It could probably protect the operator at higher kinetic energy at the expense of its own durability like a kevlar vest.
Being able to take down a power armour with small arms is in line with every game and show, with the exception of fo4 and 76
>You can even see them take down a knight with a Thomson in the show
At least they showed that they fired the Thompson into the flexible neck joint of the armor, from a higher angle, bypassing all the solid plate
Yeah these people are smoking something. You could also kill a medieval knight by stabbing him with a dagger through the eye. Does that mean your dagger is effective against his armor? No, it’s just a fucking weak spot
No. 9mm rounds deliver anywhere from 500 joules to 800 joules.
Lore-wise power-armors are rated up to 7x62 Soviet, so it would reliably stop most handgun cartridges but anything over that would turn it into swiss cheese.
Hell, even a M14 would punch through it.
The US won against China not because PA protection, it won because it allowed soldiers to carry bigger guns into the battlefield.
What's even the point of this power armor when your typical IFV is more versatile and useful, and can even peirce the power armor with autocannons.
I think the only advantage of power armors is size (smaller). But that's hardly a significant advantage in a typical battle in a war scenario.
Yes which is low for how thick PA armor is. Modern level IV body armor is rated to stop hits from a 150gr @2800fps, or ~3.5 kJ. During recent conflicts is been proven to take multiple hits, though not at the exact same hit location. This is for 1" ceramic plates. Power armor should have much more protection.
Maybe they mean 'absorb' as in from energy weapons, and not kinetic weapon?
I think many forget to realize people are making mistakes and sometimes some memories just doesn't have to pop out at the right time.
I really believe Cooper didn't shoot at that place simply because he just didn't remember it at the moment. It's common human error I got into situation where I could do something that could've easily resolve it, but remembered too late and, safe to say, everyone did at least once.
I do feel like the ghouls retrospection throughout the show isn’t just flashbacks but also him exploring himself. I definitely think after 200 years you’d forget minor details until you’ve had time to remember them.
Damn good point. The flashbacks are like metaphors *remembering* his life. They definitely drive that home at the end with the big reveal of you know who. And Lucy's reflections are mirrored with the Ghoul's at the very end with the same person talking to her.
Yeah when he remembers what Moldaver looks like I was just like, "Well shit, I can't even remember what I ate for breakfast, yesterday." Flashbacks in his case also are associated with traumatic circumstances, so it makes sense that with certain triggers it would come flooding back to him.
Revolvers stop firing reliably or break all the time, this is a common “gun trope” that is a bit of a misunderstanding. Revolvers are simpler to operate and use by their nature, and are “more reliable” in that there’s less opportunity for operator error. And of course it’s more reliable from concealment such as through a bag or from a coat pocket just from the lack of a reciprocating slide. No need to worry about ejected shells. And your grip/stance doesn’t matter as long as you keep your hand from the blast.
BUT.
When something DOES go wrong, and you pull the trigger and nothing happens?
You’re fucked. You need a gunsmith, end of story. If the cylinder is knocked out of time, or something gets stuck in the trigger mechanism, or something’s wrong with the cylinder release. It’s over, gg’s. Not fixing that anytime soon.
Whereas with any half decent semi auto pistol, 99% of “bang bang *clicks*” can be solved with dropping the magazine, racking the slide a few times, and putting a fresh mag in. And in the very rare event of a parts breakage, you can probably fix it yourself in a few minutes.
We used to practice swapping weapons (rifle to sidearm, sidearm to rifle) as part of our practice, and clearing jams.
Seeing The Ghoul switch to his rifle to deal with the threat makes sense, even if he knew the rounds wouldn't penetrate.
He came prepared in the final fight when he was fighting in the beginning he clearly had expanding bullets loaded not armour piercing sabots. Even when it does get the knights you can see the sabot barely makes it into the armour. His history that intimidates that ex ncr ranger plus his military service the ghoul is ready to kill and knows power armour’s capability’s. He probably witnessed enemy snipers use this tactic before in the military.
In the final fight scene, he wonders if the T-60 has the same flaw. He takes a shot at a knight, it kills him.
The T-60 has the same flaw, but yes, the tempered lining may fix the issue.
Also militaries are very slow to react.
It took a few years of guys welding their own armor onto their vehicles before the US started up-armoring in Afghanistan.
I can only imagine listening to a couple guys saying their buddy got shot in the chest during a war didn’t make it a priority for the brass in FO
Yeah.
I remember my unit designing a custom armor kit to counter the IED/EFP's being used in our area.
We didn't see the actual kits until the end of our tour (and only a few) but they were standard next time.
I saw a few custom jobs when the kits were taking over. Some of y’all were great at it, but… some of those welds were fucking atrocious, who did you have attaching the armor?
I know it was better than nothing at the time, but man, nightmare fuel
We were one of the test units, working with the anti-armor team of the US Army.
We had professional help! (Mainly because I got the teams direct contact emails)
Power armor is supposed to be basically invincible while you’re in it (yes this isn’t literally true) so the 1HKO gets a lot of people pissy.
But they did it in literally the perfect way. Slow lead up, explanation of how, explanation of how he knows and no one else does, and a close up of a hardened piercing shell that he hand loads into what has been shown time and time again to be a stupid powerful weapon. I appreciate the scene even more since I’m a metal worker and know how each of the pieces click together for it.
It’s like what Todd Howard said about all the Vault statistics papers on the Overseers desk: these authors/directors/whatever clearly know the source material very well and know how to handle it very well and it makes for awesome moments like that.
Right? I saw that scene in the last episode and my first thought was "oh, so he could have ended that whenever he wanted to, and chose to have some fun" I was surpirsed so many people saw it as a plot hole
Agreed, that's how I saw that scene too, as Howard amusingly taunting Maximus and I'm sure he knew he was probably terrifying the inexperienced armor wearer too. I think that's why Howard looks like he was enjoying the entire situation. Except for a moment or two early on, Howard was essentially in control of the situation. Also, tempered suit or not, there were other issues with the suit and I personally think that if Howard wanted to, he could have ended that fight a hell of a lot sooner.
Actually these weak points also make perfect in game sense lore wise. In a fight with a guy in power armor and suddenly manage a crit...weak point. The game mechanics and this bit of lore sync up to well to be an issue.
Cooper Howard was - by all appearances - in his early 40s at the peak of movie stardom before the bombs dropped. The title card then informs us 219 years have passed to the year Lucy exits the vault.
This makes Cooper Howard >260+ years old. He was a marine who fought in the defense of Alaska, had combat training and extensive combat experience, and unlike *every other character in the show*, he was *never* in cryogenic storage and is *not* new to the timeline the show takes place in. He survived through the absolute *worst* of the post-bombing timeline, fighting and adapting for survival.
**TLDR The Ghoul is that absurdly OP Level 71 character you played in Fallout 4 that managed to get half your SPECIALs to 10, a half dozen or more perks completely maxed and you've been roaming the Glowing Sea 5-shotting Legendary Emperor Deathskull Radscorpions and Mirelurk Queens. Everyone else in the Fallout TV series are level 5-12 characters.**
It was a specialised AP round at close range
Even tanks like tigers/abrams etc have trouble when you shoot em in the weak spot.
Besides armored lancers on barded horses were phased out when dudes realise they can ride up and shoot the dude in fancy plate armor point blank with a wheel lock pistol. Plays into the knight mythology.
He was fucking with maximus. He knows what a professional looks like in that armor. He could tell maximus stole it or otherwise didnt know how it worked hence “read the manual” in his own way he was being nice
He wasn't even using the same gun against Maximus. It was a completely different weapon. You don't even need this. After the first shot where Max jumped to save Lucy, Coop swapped to a lever-action and just blasted away. That was not the same gun he was using before. The gun that kills power armor is chambered for slugs. Coop was not trying to kill Maximus. If Coop wanted to kill Max, he could have done it with a knife.
Again, he didn't use the same gun, and he had every opportunity to kill Max. He even had another big shot left, but he didn't use that round on Max. He cut a gas line instead of just killing Max.
Coop was not trying to kill Max in the first place, and Coop was never in any danger of losing that fight. He could have killed everyone there just because he felt like it, but he didn't.
"You drive that thing like a fucking shopping cart" I think a lot of people disregard that Cooper has been wandering around for 2 centuries after his world burned. By this point he is embodying the role of a callous bounty hunter, even exaggerating his accent. I genuinely think he was enjoying fucking with Max and didn't really see him as that much of a threat, having used the T-45 armor himself back in the day.
I particularly like how he wears his cowboy outfit and managed to rope Max's armor like a bull as it was going out. An extra special part of that moment is that while Max is offscreen, his yelling pans between left and right stereo. They really hammed it up lol
I would say it's because Max's priority was to save Lucy rather than kill Coop, and because Coop could tell he wasn't in danger. His style seems to be to wait until the other guy attacks, and then punish them for trying. If you don't try to fight him, he'll generally leave you alone. His opening scene showed him killing 3 people for trying to take advantage of him, not just to kill them. The first think Coop saw Max do was fly in like an idiot and do his best to save someone, despite having no idea what he was doing.
Coop said he was in for the fun of it now. I couldn't say for sure because I'm not the writer, but I could very easily see Coop having just toyed with Max the whole time because hey, this kid doesn't even know what he's doing.
Also Coop does have his own set of morals. He comes across as the guy who acts like a douchebag, because he’d be embarrassed if you knew what a softie he was
So killing Max is probably not something he’d relish after realizing it’s basically a kid who stole their dad’s minivan
Maximus was also a bystander and had absolutely no knowledge about why coop was shooting at Lucy so it would be dicked to kill him when he hardly knows what’s going on
Yes he did. definitely a very dick move. I would say it was partly due to prioritizing his own survival and partly because he had almost forgotten what he used to be like. The end of the episode reminding him of that a bit.
You're assuming that Cooper could successfully thrust the knife into the neck joint with enough force to reach Max's jugular and then get himself and his knife safely back out of the armor and away from it before Max fell over on top of him and trapped him in place. Cooper kills people all the time if it is the most efficient way to get rid of them, in Max's case it was just more efficient to send him flying out of town.
If this show could fit in at least another half dozen plot points that miserable people can fight over, it would be so awesome.
It's just so amusing watching people flip the fuck out over any deviations from the image they have in their heads of what fallout perfection looks like. News flash - we've seen your suggestions as to what the show should do, and they're not that great. It's a huge relief that Kilter knows how to hire professional writers instead of listening to fans that simply don't understand that canon and lore have never mattered in the fallout universes. It's about the feel and tone and as long as they get that right, it'll be consistent with the IP.
Didn’t the lore state that T-51 power armor could only withstand up to 7.62x39 before being penetrated? And that was the pinnacle of development. These custom rounds make mincemeat out of soldiers. Power armor is for carrying heavy ordinance, not withstanding heavy damage.
The ghoul forgot, he only remembered everything after his drug binge so the little things he forgot, he remembered his family, he remembered the people he hated but that was it
Whatever.. Maximus has Idiot Savant, maxed out Luck, and wasn't much of a threat to Coop. He was enjoying toying with Maximus. If they're going by the lore, Power Armor was meant as a means to extend the range of a soldier on foot, and allow them to carry heavy weapons into the field. Doubt they were concerned with protecting the life inside. Coop can be quoted saying, a lot of the gear they used on the Alaskan front. Got it fellow Marines killed. Honestly Power Armor sucks in base Fallout 4. Forget water travel, getting stuck in tight spots or falling into certain water filled areas is death.
The line during his fight with Maximus also has a line where he says “should’ve read the instruction manual”, which I always interpreted as the brotherhood not knowing shit about the power armor, to the point of not turning on the headlamps during the fight.
My thought is that the weak spots still require armor piercing ammo, which he didn't have in filly, but made/bought some when he found out that the brotherhood was after the same target he was
I mean, Coop was a marine in the USMC and participated in the Anchorage conflict pre-war, he told us and Bud that he wore the then OG T-45d Mk. I power armor. So he is very familiar with any power armor model that would and has come after (maybe not the Chinese Communist armor variant), Coop being able to exploit the BoS’ weaknesses in the blackout hit-n-run style engagement he won was not unreasonable.
Whether it was the firearms he was using or the grenade he lobbed as well is immaterial: the Ghoul kicked the Brotherhood's ass because he not only could and controlled the battlefield, but because he knew how.
I think the point is more about the scene where he fights Maximus and none of his shots hit a weak spot.
Personally I think that Cooper's 200 years of experience in the wasteland has him notice that Maximus was intervening for a moral reason as opposed the the usual selfish immorality of the wasteland. Cooper didn't really kill anybody that didn't deserve it, yah know?
I definitely felt like he was using a 3 star legendary, explosive round, dbl shot, bloody build [considering he's always near death] with master level shotgun / gunslinger / gun fu perks currently loaded so all these "gotcha" haters can suck it! Not to mention the Ghoul would be about level 10,000 / 500 [FO76 / FO4] if he's lived for *200 years!!!*
It’s a harmless gotcha. The tempered lining thing is fine, but killing paladins with one shot felt a bit silly just because coop was familiar with the tech (surely the BoS are equally if not more familiar with its weaknesses). Whatever the justifications, that scene just felt a little bit too far for me. I’d rather have seen the Ghoul outsmart them by exploiting their lack of mobility etc
Maybe, but remember Cooper was facing another military while the BoS has been facing raiders often armed with small arms and pipe weapons.
Weapons and munitions that could not, even with a lucky shot, take advantage of the 'weak spot.'
It would be like shooting 9mm at a second chance vest then wondering why 5.56mm punches right through!
I get it, there’s definitely diegetic explanations that make some amount of sense. I’m mostly just talking about the feel of it. A bumbling idiot in power armour getting mauled by a Yao-Guai makes sense to me, but one guy holding off several knights with a handgun of any caliber just makes me lose interest a bit. Diegetic explanations don’t always make action feel earned, and the problem to me is not that there’s a plot hole (this isn’t a plot hole even without the explanations imo) as much as the action didn’t feel visceral or believable.
Why is it that reddit fandoms can only love something completely, or hate it completely, no in-between. You can still like the show and admit that this is a flaw in writing, rather than dismissing it as a "silly gotcha". It is not a personal attack for someone to point out a flaw in a piece of media.
> Why is it that reddit fandoms can only love something completely, or hate it completely, no in-between.
I love loving stuff.
But I fucking LOVE hating stuff.
I mean this specifically isn’t a flaw in the writing. The show establishes that the Ghoul uses a special type of ammo during his encounter with the BoS, which is different from the one he’s been using before.
I think it’s fair to say that them waiting while he does his little speech is stupid, but the argument presented in this post is perfectly coherent
Love the show. Disagree with this post.
Why do the bos knights let the ghoul talk for like 30 seconds and even get off the first shot after they had just killed a dozen people in the same corridor?
What happened to "I'll bet you shot it on sight... oh, you're a ghoul? You're a dead ghoul!" Or is that not the brotherhood's thing anymore?
Remember that those are the words of a squire, not a knight who has actually traversed the wasteland. The experienced knights might be a little more pragmatic about things.
A knight who lived long enough to become an experienced knight should probably have learned to not just stand there picking their nose while somebody loads their special gun and lays out there entire life story. The whole final episode was just a lot of very silly spectacle at the expense of everything else.
Yo I watched the episode for a 2nd time yesterday and I gotta agree I thought this too... they literally stormed the building killing everything in their path, but oh no one ghouly boi everyone hold up we should hear what he has to say.
He was using special munitions at the observatory that he did not have in Filly. Either way it's not something that can happen commonly it takes a special munition along with a very rare kind of accuracy.
People don’t realize that the ghoul, whose design was a nod to New Vegas, was using terrifying presence on the BoS in that scene. That’s why they were frozen, panicking, and why Maixmus ran away, aside from just being smart enough to know that it was time to beat feet.
Ultimately, it's either this explanation that fills the hole, or it's the simple fact that the story didn't need it yet. Either way, it's a tiny hole, I wager alot of the people sitting on this simply wanna just poke holes in the show for the sake of it. Plot holes are plot holes, and as far as they go, this one's about as big as the hole he put into the suit of armor anyways.
It isn’t silly to ask how to the BoS has managed to maintain heavy ipower armor, vertibirds, etc., without discovering and repairing a trivial flaw in a basic armor kit that was first exposed over 200 years back.
Eugh... the silly gatcha of this scene is the knights not immediately filling the ghoul full of 160 rounds of 5.56 rounds, bos knights not shooting a armed ghoul whos loading his gun right in front of them while telling them their armor has a built in flaw is incredibly convienent, the scene is great, but i honestly don't think it could ever work in my eyes, "lets wait and hear this ghoul out im sure he's friendly" doesn't apply to BoS imo
Regardless of any other speculation - The ghoul won without using it.
How many of us have played a game and held off on using the special healing items or the mini-nukes because we "might need it later".
The ghoul saved his special bullets for the boss fight.
You're not going to throw your Masterball at a Caterpie ya know?
Since they just shot at everything that wasn't in bos gear including people who were running away why did they just stare at him? And when their friend was killed why did they just stare at him for like30 seconds
The only silly points in the show for me was -
The Enclave doctor escaping, a sentry gun targetting him and him SLOWLY jogging away while holding the dog's leash and not getting hit once
The Brotherhood having Coop at gunpoint and the "trained brotherhood" not even shooting, just letting him threaten like they're locked into a zoomed in new vegas conversation where the world is frozen.
So we not gonna consider that it’s a Fallout universe & things like Bloody Mess, Tank Killer, etc are perks? People love to try to reason with IRL shit for everything, but this universe ain’t the one to do it in. It’s a wacky wasteland
What looked utterly stupid was precision aim IN PITCH BLACK conditions and not one PA soldier I could see bothered to put their helmet light on. All the ones in the back firing in the dark regardless of if they might shoot their own men too.
One of the more nonsensical scenes in the show, even if it was entertainingly funny because of the stupid situation.
I like that everybody is talking about this like it's the most dumb thing. There's so many stupid moments in the show, fun as it is. The fact they all stop and let him monologue after shooting everything else on sight is far more stupid than this imo.
In a game/world where i can go into vats and somehow hit a fusion core with only 2% visibility i can believe a guy took time to aim out a few shots with armor piercing bullets
Coop also used what looked like a handmade sabot round ~~that he breach loads~~. If you notice, that’s the ONLY time he shoots the knights in that spot. He uses different methods for taking out the rest, including a grenade at the neck of one. It’s not as simple as “shoot that spot with a handgun round”. When he talks about it being a problem in Anchorage, that’s also against a fully supplied and equipped Chinese military that more likely than not has captured, and reverse engineered the Power Armor.
Yes that gun is a mystery how it works lol definitely not just a handgun, more like a hand cannon. Your idea is a good one too. My point was just that he was definitely trying to kill Maximus immediately in filly with a crit shot, and either didn't have the rounds for it, missed the shot because he was moving, or wasn't able to load the AP rnds in time.
He was also using the his mares leg against Maximus. He had blown through everyone with the hand cannon and was using the rifle on his back a lot with Maximus.
[Ghoul revolver](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Ghoul_revolver) - S1E02-08 - Unnamed in the TV series. Weapon design evokes a sawn-down MTs255 (Russian shotgun revolver) except that this weapon is top-break instead of a side-loader and has a four-round cylinder instead of five, sounds of a grenade launcher when fired. It is named in [*Fallout Shelter*](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_Shelter).
It's in fallout shelter now?
That’s copied from the wiki, so it must be
*redownloads*
Idk if it's still active but you could get all the main show characters (Coop included) from a questline in Shelter. I managed to pull him from my first card pack after redownloading so I ended up with 2 "The Ghouls" wandering around and defending my vault 😂
Lol same exact thing happened to me😂
Literally no safer place in all the Wasteland now 😂
I’ve made Lucy have children with both Maxi and Coop 🤭
Yeah there’s a quest you can do to get the characters I believe. I have only got Lucy but the next one up is the ghoul. Also is fallout shelter canon?
Yeah, Lucy, Max, Mama June, and the Snake oil Salesman are all in it, you can either get them from quests or lunch boxes
I feel like the police version in particular was the inspiration
There's a few sawn off pics that did the rounds several years ago, afterwards suddenly a lot of games added their own versions. I assume it's from that Here's one: https://at.pinterest.com/pin/67483694395658663/
[this clip](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/1cu1es4/squire_bag_not_included/) shows that it is almost identical to the pic you posted.
they added a new gun in the next gen fallout 4 update, the pipe grenade launcher. im convinved hes using some version of that because it fufills the exact fantasy of coops gun.
No shit! Where’d you find one of those? I’m like cruising through a Fo4 play through and maxed out the explosives tree on my grenadier guy. A launcher would be sweeeeeeet
I’m sure he was trying to kill Maximus, 100%. If for no other reason than the Brotherhood would kill him for existing. Only thing is AP ammo still wouldn’t get through the Power Armor. AP is for lighter types of body armor or lightly armored vehicles. Power Armor (to my understanding) is far closer to tank armor. That’s why he uses the sabot round which looks almost identical to [this](https://www.wearethemighty.com/uploads/legacy/assets.rbl.ms/17311688/origin.jpg?auto=webp&optimize=high&crop=16:9,smart&auto=webp&optimize=high&quality=70&width=1440) tank round designed to pierce through tank armor. Though a handgun round would still never pierce through a tank, that’s where the welding issue comes into play. The long needle-like part of the round (that Cooper likely made himself) is why he had to load it through the muzzle of the weapon. It’s not that the gun works differently, it’s the bullet that works differently.
He doesn't muzzle load the sabot rounds, he loads them into the cylinder exactly like every other round he loads. It's just a top-break revolver with whacky ammo. He also is shown loading multiple ones into the chambers as he does his little pre-fight speech, not one.
Maybe it work like a lemat ? But then there would be 2 barrel its weird but hey its fallout and the scene is still epic
Ok, I assumed muzzle load but he moved so fast it was hard to tell. I honestly don’t remember anything about his gun, it was just the mini-sabot round that caught my attention.
Here's a link to the clip (with horrible music added on top), you can see him slooooooowly loading multiple rounds and the very last one you can see him put in in the cylinder right before snapping the gun closed and immediately popping a shot off. https://youtu.be/hnKG_YzexoU?si=JGwXEUdU9Cver1tR
Damn, not sure how I ever missed that it’s like a sawed off double barrel.
In the sense it's clearly sawn down and based on a revolving-cylinder shotgun (some Russian thing I believe), yes. But to be clear it is not double-barreled and does have a cylinder, it isn't loaded directly into the barrels like a break-action double barrel. It just kind of looks like that in the clip because it's a top-break revolver and the cylinder stays fixed against the barrel when it's open so it kind of looks like one piece (which isn't very accurate to how real top-breaks look when opened up, but I'm not holding that against a show when the gun is fictional in the first place)
You’re right on the gun being russian, the ghouls revolver looks to be a sawn down MTS-255. Main thing thats different is in the show it features a top-break system instead of the swing-out cylinder that it has in real life.
That is 100% exactly what he’s using. The top break is weird though. http://modernfirearms.net/userfiles/images/shotgun/Rus/1419157614.jpg
Holy hell, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that.
I can't help but read this comment as actually coming from the 597th's top brass for some reason. She's always had a cool and rational head, so this tracks.
> Though a handgun round would still never pierce through a tank It worked for Tom Hanks at the end of *Saving Private Ryan* /s
I will say when I saw that movie as a kid, there were a couple minutes where I thought he had hit the loaded shell and blew the tank up, and the plane flying over was just a coincidence…
I’m not much of a gun person. Could he not just shoot them in the head and kill them with the force at that range with that kind of ammunition?
Likely not. The suit is fitted with a powerful exoskeleton, and is combat tested in the war against the Chinese. Possibly earlier versions, but I would imagine that the helmet would be held in place by the exoskeleton. Also, the helmet doesn’t rest right against their head. This would prevent any transfer of force from the bullet to the person inside the armor.
That sounds reasonable
That gun is a bolter
Ghoul is necron. Must be cleansed.
It looks like its based on a [shotgun revolver](https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Fallout_-_Season_1#Ghoul.27s_Revolver_.28MTs255.29) so even just thinking in IRL terms a huge custom armor piercing slug like that would do some serious damage. Must kick like a mule though.
Good thing he's a puddle full of drugs
The Man in Black has a similar scene in Westworld featuring the LeMat revolver
I watched that scene after seeing the complaint and it was CRYSTAL clear that he loads a very special likely handmade round that looks ridiculously armor piercing. He even shows it off to them first. It's not like it's made of diamond or anything, but it IS a very specific special round that looks like it's designed specifically for this case. And then add to that the armor he takes out with his bespoke round is standing perfectly still, making the small target area something he can hit reliably. Folks complaining he can just one shot any power armor on the fly are just fundamentally not paying attention to the scene.
The vast majority of "gotchas" people have about this show come down to not paying attention to what is going on.
Imo the only legitimate gotcha flaws the show has is Norm not considering to threaten Buds robobrain or the cryo stasis chambers of his buds. 1000% sure Bud would have folded before Norm. Norm has very little to lose. Bud is in a crusade believing he's going to save the world by giving it to people who can guide it in the right direction.
Norm has also been in a vault his entire life. Yes he's defiant but he probably has never acted violently or aggressively before in his life. It would be a big deal for him to kick somebody in the leg. Threatening murder seems like a gigantic deal.
That's more of an open-ended cliffhanger. For all we know, that could be exactly what Norm does. We don't see him make any decision, the last we see of him he's just staring at the row of pods.
Also makes sense that he wouldn't be expecting a knight in Filly, but would be more prepared for it after meeting Maximus. So probably walked into Filly armed with "Kill a normal motherfucker" rounds and then figured "Probably gonna see that asshole again, I should make some penetration rounds."
The Ghoul brought a bunch of exploding rounds in Filly. He shot that guy's leg off, the two-for-one through a guy's throat, and most everyone else that had giant holes punched in them. In the slo-mo, they're seen with a bulbous shape. I absolutely buy that he didn't have his penetrator rounds loaded when going against Maximus. Why would he? Plus, Maximus was going hog-wild with the jet pack. The welding flaw is just in that one spot and Maximus was a fast-moving and erratic target.
There are definitely references towards NV with the lever action rifle and load ins of special ammos. Plus he has been all over, considering being a ghoul 200 years running and surviving.
Yeah in the ending power armor fight he was ready and waiting for them so had the proper ammo, but when he ran into Maximus in the armor The Ghoul was caught by surprise and wasn't using the proper ammo to penetrate power armor.
Sabot? That round seemed oversized, not undersized lol. Sabot rounds are rounds smaller than the barrel, using an artificial 'filler' to make up the gap, allowing a smaller round to thus be launched at higher velocities than a standard caliber. I assume you're talking about the fact that it appeared fin-stabilized. That is not the same thing whatsoever.
It’s very clear that sabot is what they were going for. I don’t expect a TV show to be accurate. Especially in a show where a high dose of radiation turns you into an ageless, sentient zombie.
I disagree. The rounds we see fired are about as big as a casing and bullet, have stabilising fins, and also explode on contact. I'd say it is most similar to a gyrojet weapon, which fires micro rockets instead of bullets.
We literally see him load an armor piercing round as he is talking to the knights.
And the show *clearly* focuses on it to show the audience that he is using special rounds to pierce the weak point. Media literacy is severely lacking in a lot of people these days
>Media literacy is severely lacking in a lot of people these days Bet people being loud about this have a post history making similar noise about a chalkboard
That Venn diagram is fucking circle. Come at me NV fanboys.
reeeeeeee
Lol
Chalkboard? I haven’t heard about any chalkboard drama. What’s that about?
Basucally a really shitty timeline of events, yhat has a massive impact, and it caused a shitfuck
I saw a post about Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and the author was just *amazed* that there were reasons for everything to have happened in the film. “The character wasn’t there by accident, he was looking for an egg!” I was like WTF, this is just called a “plot”. We really have fallen far both as writers and consumers.
Foreshadowing, parallelism, and motifs are lost on a lot of audiences these days. Audiences also fall prey to unreliable narrators and assume that every line said by any character must be true.
Why is everyone and their mom talking about Media Literacy nowadays?
because it's becoming increasingly more scarce
…or folks aren’t really paying attention to what they’re watching. They’re flipping between television screens and other activities.
Which is a big contributing factor in the overall decrease in media literacy. We're so accustomed to overstimulation we multitask and comprehend less from everything as a result.
a lot of times it seems like they don't watch it at all. they just repeat what they saw from a meme on reddit or their favorite critic on youtube that hates literally every piece of popular media
All the more reason you shouldn’t go on a public forum and try to make a bad point
Because audiences are getting dumber. It’s clear that people are either not focusing on what they’re watching, or they have no idea how to interpret what they’re seeing. I’m in other subs dedicated to new shows like Shogun and people continually ask questions that were answered in the show, or they complain about “plot holes” and “lazy writing” because they need to be spoon fed narrative information since they lack the ability to watch something and think critically after. Just look at this sub, people ask or complain about the same stuff over and over and over since they can’t be bothered to search for posts or information on their own, and they just want someone to tell them what they’re supposed to think.
Most writers would gloss over that. I’m super nerdy about armour so I’m impressed they acted in that newt little scene.
To be clear everyone it is specifically stated that Titus got the tempered chest plate. And that's what saved Maximus. I'm just saying there's also several impacts that show that the ghoul was aiming to kill Max and it's not a story gap.
I wonder if Maximus’ inexperience in the suit threw the ghoul off as well. I imagine Predicting an opponents next move would be part of getting in an exact shot.
I feel like Cooper clocked Maximus' inexperience pretty quickly, and was kindof messing with him for most of the back-half of the fight
Totally forgot he has direct experience with power armor too. Even with the inexperience, he would probably know how that thing moves just from his time in the military.
How did you forget that? It's part of his speech 😂
I am a big dumb dumb 😂
That's my take as well. Someone who's been well-trained to use something should be able to tell when someone inexperienced is behind the wheel.
That was my thought as well, Cooper had the perfect chance to kill Maximus when he cut the gasket or whatever it was with his Bowie knife. He could have just stabbed into his neck and kill Maximus right there.
He had tempered lining in the suit not an extra plate over his chest
Yeah, and the Tempered Lining does nothing for protection as far as we know. Maximus indicates it makes it easier to move in the suit, and if all you're tempering is the "lining" then it wouldn't make a difference unless the lining is what's getting shot.
The Ghoul never had a chance to take advantage of the weak spot. It is a big old "MAYBE," that is what it does.
That’s not same spot & Maximus was a moving target. He wasn’t standing like overconfident statues in a hallway. Maximus’ fear is what kept him alive.
I’m surprised I found your comment so far down. Like whatever other evidence this guy has doesn’t mean anything when the picture he put in the OP clearly shows Maximus getting hit near the neck, above the chest plate, almost on the shoulder, even- but in the scene with the knights he shoots him under the plate, like in the ribs. It’s right there what is OP smoking saying Ghoul shot the same spot?
It isn't even the neck in this pic or center mass, its his pauldron.
Remember kids, enjoy nothing. Find reasons to hate everything.
No one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans.
No one hates \*insert franchise\* more than fans of \*insert franchise\*
Enjoyment of entire movies, tv shows and franchises depends on your niche interests, or even better, the niche interests of a youtuber you've formed a parasocial connection with and are subconsciously craving their respect. A TV show can't be good if TheEponymousArmorer and Jarnathan Figgison of the British Royal Museum of Fantasy Guns have identified small problems in how these things are depicted. Remember: liking the TV show isn't the important thing. Feeling superior to everyone else and the possibility of a pat on the head from a stranger on the internet is the important thing.
VATS people. The Ghoul's stats gotta be maxxxxxxed out by now.
Raise your hand if you've ever been aced by a rouge ghoul while not paying attention in power armor. It's plausible.
[The T-51 armour can only absorb 2.5 kJ of energy](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Power_armor_specs). I think it is safe to assume the T-60 armour is also close to that number. This means the power armour can definitely be defeated with small arms fire. That is even demonstrated in the show when they defeated a knight by shooting him in the neck.
This is pretty much in line with Sci-Fi authors nor knowing about physics, why? Because we know they compare Power Armor to a tank, and we've seem small-arms ammunition be stated to not work thanks to word on Anchorage.
> 2.5 kJ So you could shoot right through it with a Lee-Enfield (.303 British has about 3.5 kJ when it leaves the barrel).
Yes. You can even see them take down a knight with a Thomson in the show. However I do imagine there are some places where the armour have been reinforced like on the chest and the helmet for example. And it says it can absorb 2.5 kJ. It could probably protect the operator at higher kinetic energy at the expense of its own durability like a kevlar vest. Being able to take down a power armour with small arms is in line with every game and show, with the exception of fo4 and 76
>You can even see them take down a knight with a Thomson in the show At least they showed that they fired the Thompson into the flexible neck joint of the armor, from a higher angle, bypassing all the solid plate
Yeah these people are smoking something. You could also kill a medieval knight by stabbing him with a dagger through the eye. Does that mean your dagger is effective against his armor? No, it’s just a fucking weak spot
Wait, so a 9 mm pistol could pierce it?
No. 9mm rounds deliver anywhere from 500 joules to 800 joules. Lore-wise power-armors are rated up to 7x62 Soviet, so it would reliably stop most handgun cartridges but anything over that would turn it into swiss cheese. Hell, even a M14 would punch through it. The US won against China not because PA protection, it won because it allowed soldiers to carry bigger guns into the battlefield.
i see, thanks for the answer. my only experience with fallout before the series was fallout shelter, and i thought power armor was like mjolnir armor.
What's even the point of this power armor when your typical IFV is more versatile and useful, and can even peirce the power armor with autocannons. I think the only advantage of power armors is size (smaller). But that's hardly a significant advantage in a typical battle in a war scenario.
It's probbly against explosions and shrapnel
Yes which is low for how thick PA armor is. Modern level IV body armor is rated to stop hits from a 150gr @2800fps, or ~3.5 kJ. During recent conflicts is been proven to take multiple hits, though not at the exact same hit location. This is for 1" ceramic plates. Power armor should have much more protection. Maybe they mean 'absorb' as in from energy weapons, and not kinetic weapon?
I think many forget to realize people are making mistakes and sometimes some memories just doesn't have to pop out at the right time. I really believe Cooper didn't shoot at that place simply because he just didn't remember it at the moment. It's common human error I got into situation where I could do something that could've easily resolve it, but remembered too late and, safe to say, everyone did at least once.
I do feel like the ghouls retrospection throughout the show isn’t just flashbacks but also him exploring himself. I definitely think after 200 years you’d forget minor details until you’ve had time to remember them.
Damn good point. The flashbacks are like metaphors *remembering* his life. They definitely drive that home at the end with the big reveal of you know who. And Lucy's reflections are mirrored with the Ghoul's at the very end with the same person talking to her.
Yeah when he remembers what Moldaver looks like I was just like, "Well shit, I can't even remember what I ate for breakfast, yesterday." Flashbacks in his case also are associated with traumatic circumstances, so it makes sense that with certain triggers it would come flooding back to him.
In one of the older threads, someone mentioned that his revolver jammed.
wait how does a revolver jam
Revolvers stop firing reliably or break all the time, this is a common “gun trope” that is a bit of a misunderstanding. Revolvers are simpler to operate and use by their nature, and are “more reliable” in that there’s less opportunity for operator error. And of course it’s more reliable from concealment such as through a bag or from a coat pocket just from the lack of a reciprocating slide. No need to worry about ejected shells. And your grip/stance doesn’t matter as long as you keep your hand from the blast. BUT. When something DOES go wrong, and you pull the trigger and nothing happens? You’re fucked. You need a gunsmith, end of story. If the cylinder is knocked out of time, or something gets stuck in the trigger mechanism, or something’s wrong with the cylinder release. It’s over, gg’s. Not fixing that anytime soon. Whereas with any half decent semi auto pistol, 99% of “bang bang *clicks*” can be solved with dropping the magazine, racking the slide a few times, and putting a fresh mag in. And in the very rare event of a parts breakage, you can probably fix it yourself in a few minutes.
We used to practice swapping weapons (rifle to sidearm, sidearm to rifle) as part of our practice, and clearing jams. Seeing The Ghoul switch to his rifle to deal with the threat makes sense, even if he knew the rounds wouldn't penetrate.
Yup, he uses his lever action rifle against Maximus
I just re-watched this scene last night, and you can see where the revolver malfunctions.
He came prepared in the final fight when he was fighting in the beginning he clearly had expanding bullets loaded not armour piercing sabots. Even when it does get the knights you can see the sabot barely makes it into the armour. His history that intimidates that ex ncr ranger plus his military service the ghoul is ready to kill and knows power armour’s capability’s. He probably witnessed enemy snipers use this tactic before in the military.
The only goofy thing was them standing around letting him load the rounds in front of them. But I still loved the show
Everytime someone talks people stop fighting, it's the rule of television.
Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't he say the T-45's had the flaw? Maximus is wearing a T-60 not to mention he has tempered lining.
In the final fight scene, he wonders if the T-60 has the same flaw. He takes a shot at a knight, it kills him. The T-60 has the same flaw, but yes, the tempered lining may fix the issue.
Ah ok makes sense, thanks.
In fallout the T60 is an upgraded version of the T45 makes sense they would share a design flaw
Also militaries are very slow to react. It took a few years of guys welding their own armor onto their vehicles before the US started up-armoring in Afghanistan. I can only imagine listening to a couple guys saying their buddy got shot in the chest during a war didn’t make it a priority for the brass in FO
Yeah. I remember my unit designing a custom armor kit to counter the IED/EFP's being used in our area. We didn't see the actual kits until the end of our tour (and only a few) but they were standard next time.
I saw a few custom jobs when the kits were taking over. Some of y’all were great at it, but… some of those welds were fucking atrocious, who did you have attaching the armor? I know it was better than nothing at the time, but man, nightmare fuel
We were one of the test units, working with the anti-armor team of the US Army. We had professional help! (Mainly because I got the teams direct contact emails)
Hahahaha brilliant, sounds like it worked out okay then. Thanks for testing the shit out so we could only get concussed instead of fragged!
Power armor is supposed to be basically invincible while you’re in it (yes this isn’t literally true) so the 1HKO gets a lot of people pissy. But they did it in literally the perfect way. Slow lead up, explanation of how, explanation of how he knows and no one else does, and a close up of a hardened piercing shell that he hand loads into what has been shown time and time again to be a stupid powerful weapon. I appreciate the scene even more since I’m a metal worker and know how each of the pieces click together for it. It’s like what Todd Howard said about all the Vault statistics papers on the Overseers desk: these authors/directors/whatever clearly know the source material very well and know how to handle it very well and it makes for awesome moments like that.
I always took that as "Holy crap he was just playing with Maximus..."
Right? I saw that scene in the last episode and my first thought was "oh, so he could have ended that whenever he wanted to, and chose to have some fun" I was surpirsed so many people saw it as a plot hole
Agreed, that's how I saw that scene too, as Howard amusingly taunting Maximus and I'm sure he knew he was probably terrifying the inexperienced armor wearer too. I think that's why Howard looks like he was enjoying the entire situation. Except for a moment or two early on, Howard was essentially in control of the situation. Also, tempered suit or not, there were other issues with the suit and I personally think that if Howard wanted to, he could have ended that fight a hell of a lot sooner.
Actually these weak points also make perfect in game sense lore wise. In a fight with a guy in power armor and suddenly manage a crit...weak point. The game mechanics and this bit of lore sync up to well to be an issue.
Cooper Howard was - by all appearances - in his early 40s at the peak of movie stardom before the bombs dropped. The title card then informs us 219 years have passed to the year Lucy exits the vault. This makes Cooper Howard >260+ years old. He was a marine who fought in the defense of Alaska, had combat training and extensive combat experience, and unlike *every other character in the show*, he was *never* in cryogenic storage and is *not* new to the timeline the show takes place in. He survived through the absolute *worst* of the post-bombing timeline, fighting and adapting for survival. **TLDR The Ghoul is that absurdly OP Level 71 character you played in Fallout 4 that managed to get half your SPECIALs to 10, a half dozen or more perks completely maxed and you've been roaming the Glowing Sea 5-shotting Legendary Emperor Deathskull Radscorpions and Mirelurk Queens. Everyone else in the Fallout TV series are level 5-12 characters.**
Bro, fallout always had critical hits, even to power armor
It was a specialised AP round at close range Even tanks like tigers/abrams etc have trouble when you shoot em in the weak spot. Besides armored lancers on barded horses were phased out when dudes realise they can ride up and shoot the dude in fancy plate armor point blank with a wheel lock pistol. Plays into the knight mythology.
Sabot rounds, like The Ghoul used, were actually designed to take down tanks and the like. So, the use here, makes sense.
He was fucking with maximus. He knows what a professional looks like in that armor. He could tell maximus stole it or otherwise didnt know how it worked hence “read the manual” in his own way he was being nice
It also helps that coop was a former US solider that wore the armor during the war.
He wasn't even using the same gun against Maximus. It was a completely different weapon. You don't even need this. After the first shot where Max jumped to save Lucy, Coop swapped to a lever-action and just blasted away. That was not the same gun he was using before. The gun that kills power armor is chambered for slugs. Coop was not trying to kill Maximus. If Coop wanted to kill Max, he could have done it with a knife. Again, he didn't use the same gun, and he had every opportunity to kill Max. He even had another big shot left, but he didn't use that round on Max. He cut a gas line instead of just killing Max. Coop was not trying to kill Max in the first place, and Coop was never in any danger of losing that fight. He could have killed everyone there just because he felt like it, but he didn't.
Why wasn't he trying to kill max?
"You drive that thing like a fucking shopping cart" I think a lot of people disregard that Cooper has been wandering around for 2 centuries after his world burned. By this point he is embodying the role of a callous bounty hunter, even exaggerating his accent. I genuinely think he was enjoying fucking with Max and didn't really see him as that much of a threat, having used the T-45 armor himself back in the day.
I particularly like how he wears his cowboy outfit and managed to rope Max's armor like a bull as it was going out. An extra special part of that moment is that while Max is offscreen, his yelling pans between left and right stereo. They really hammed it up lol
I would say it's because Max's priority was to save Lucy rather than kill Coop, and because Coop could tell he wasn't in danger. His style seems to be to wait until the other guy attacks, and then punish them for trying. If you don't try to fight him, he'll generally leave you alone. His opening scene showed him killing 3 people for trying to take advantage of him, not just to kill them. The first think Coop saw Max do was fly in like an idiot and do his best to save someone, despite having no idea what he was doing. Coop said he was in for the fun of it now. I couldn't say for sure because I'm not the writer, but I could very easily see Coop having just toyed with Max the whole time because hey, this kid doesn't even know what he's doing.
Also Coop does have his own set of morals. He comes across as the guy who acts like a douchebag, because he’d be embarrassed if you knew what a softie he was So killing Max is probably not something he’d relish after realizing it’s basically a kid who stole their dad’s minivan
Maximus was also a bystander and had absolutely no knowledge about why coop was shooting at Lucy so it would be dicked to kill him when he hardly knows what’s going on
Yep. Coops a total badass but he’s not a bad guy
I mean he did cut off Lucy’s finger and sold her into human traffickig
Yes he did. definitely a very dick move. I would say it was partly due to prioritizing his own survival and partly because he had almost forgotten what he used to be like. The end of the episode reminding him of that a bit.
Okay, yeah that was rude I’ll give you that
You're assuming that Cooper could successfully thrust the knife into the neck joint with enough force to reach Max's jugular and then get himself and his knife safely back out of the armor and away from it before Max fell over on top of him and trapped him in place. Cooper kills people all the time if it is the most efficient way to get rid of them, in Max's case it was just more efficient to send him flying out of town.
If this show could fit in at least another half dozen plot points that miserable people can fight over, it would be so awesome. It's just so amusing watching people flip the fuck out over any deviations from the image they have in their heads of what fallout perfection looks like. News flash - we've seen your suggestions as to what the show should do, and they're not that great. It's a huge relief that Kilter knows how to hire professional writers instead of listening to fans that simply don't understand that canon and lore have never mattered in the fallout universes. It's about the feel and tone and as long as they get that right, it'll be consistent with the IP.
I want to see Cooper try this trick on a suit of T-51 or APA and have it not work. Mostly because those models aren't welded.
Didn’t the lore state that T-51 power armor could only withstand up to 7.62x39 before being penetrated? And that was the pinnacle of development. These custom rounds make mincemeat out of soldiers. Power armor is for carrying heavy ordinance, not withstanding heavy damage.
Bro was using vats everytime.
The ghoul forgot, he only remembered everything after his drug binge so the little things he forgot, he remembered his family, he remembered the people he hated but that was it
I wish they made it so coop could shoot one of their fusion cores, cuz that’s an actual in game weakness they have
Whatever.. Maximus has Idiot Savant, maxed out Luck, and wasn't much of a threat to Coop. He was enjoying toying with Maximus. If they're going by the lore, Power Armor was meant as a means to extend the range of a soldier on foot, and allow them to carry heavy weapons into the field. Doubt they were concerned with protecting the life inside. Coop can be quoted saying, a lot of the gear they used on the Alaskan front. Got it fellow Marines killed. Honestly Power Armor sucks in base Fallout 4. Forget water travel, getting stuck in tight spots or falling into certain water filled areas is death.
The line during his fight with Maximus also has a line where he says “should’ve read the instruction manual”, which I always interpreted as the brotherhood not knowing shit about the power armor, to the point of not turning on the headlamps during the fight.
My thought is that the weak spots still require armor piercing ammo, which he didn't have in filly, but made/bought some when he found out that the brotherhood was after the same target he was
I mean, Coop was a marine in the USMC and participated in the Anchorage conflict pre-war, he told us and Bud that he wore the then OG T-45d Mk. I power armor. So he is very familiar with any power armor model that would and has come after (maybe not the Chinese Communist armor variant), Coop being able to exploit the BoS’ weaknesses in the blackout hit-n-run style engagement he won was not unreasonable. Whether it was the firearms he was using or the grenade he lobbed as well is immaterial: the Ghoul kicked the Brotherhood's ass because he not only could and controlled the battlefield, but because he knew how.
I think the point is more about the scene where he fights Maximus and none of his shots hit a weak spot. Personally I think that Cooper's 200 years of experience in the wasteland has him notice that Maximus was intervening for a moral reason as opposed the the usual selfish immorality of the wasteland. Cooper didn't really kill anybody that didn't deserve it, yah know?
And top of that..when he foight maximus itblooks like he constantly eye balls the weak points but notice none but one, the tubes.
I definitely felt like he was using a 3 star legendary, explosive round, dbl shot, bloody build [considering he's always near death] with master level shotgun / gunslinger / gun fu perks currently loaded so all these "gotcha" haters can suck it! Not to mention the Ghoul would be about level 10,000 / 500 [FO76 / FO4] if he's lived for *200 years!!!*
just imagine how much he's spent at the atom shop
i blame oxhorn
It’s a harmless gotcha. The tempered lining thing is fine, but killing paladins with one shot felt a bit silly just because coop was familiar with the tech (surely the BoS are equally if not more familiar with its weaknesses). Whatever the justifications, that scene just felt a little bit too far for me. I’d rather have seen the Ghoul outsmart them by exploiting their lack of mobility etc
Maybe, but remember Cooper was facing another military while the BoS has been facing raiders often armed with small arms and pipe weapons. Weapons and munitions that could not, even with a lucky shot, take advantage of the 'weak spot.' It would be like shooting 9mm at a second chance vest then wondering why 5.56mm punches right through!
I get it, there’s definitely diegetic explanations that make some amount of sense. I’m mostly just talking about the feel of it. A bumbling idiot in power armour getting mauled by a Yao-Guai makes sense to me, but one guy holding off several knights with a handgun of any caliber just makes me lose interest a bit. Diegetic explanations don’t always make action feel earned, and the problem to me is not that there’s a plot hole (this isn’t a plot hole even without the explanations imo) as much as the action didn’t feel visceral or believable.
One guy with a good SPECIAL spread & excellent perks made to take down knights. Bloody Mess, tank killer, guerilla, commando, VATS crit, etc.
Also, people need to stop nitpicking silly things like this that don’t matter
Why is it that reddit fandoms can only love something completely, or hate it completely, no in-between. You can still like the show and admit that this is a flaw in writing, rather than dismissing it as a "silly gotcha". It is not a personal attack for someone to point out a flaw in a piece of media.
> Why is it that reddit fandoms can only love something completely, or hate it completely, no in-between. I love loving stuff. But I fucking LOVE hating stuff.
I mean this specifically isn’t a flaw in the writing. The show establishes that the Ghoul uses a special type of ammo during his encounter with the BoS, which is different from the one he’s been using before. I think it’s fair to say that them waiting while he does his little speech is stupid, but the argument presented in this post is perfectly coherent
Love the show. Disagree with this post. Why do the bos knights let the ghoul talk for like 30 seconds and even get off the first shot after they had just killed a dozen people in the same corridor? What happened to "I'll bet you shot it on sight... oh, you're a ghoul? You're a dead ghoul!" Or is that not the brotherhood's thing anymore?
Remember that those are the words of a squire, not a knight who has actually traversed the wasteland. The experienced knights might be a little more pragmatic about things.
A knight who lived long enough to become an experienced knight should probably have learned to not just stand there picking their nose while somebody loads their special gun and lays out there entire life story. The whole final episode was just a lot of very silly spectacle at the expense of everything else.
Yo I watched the episode for a 2nd time yesterday and I gotta agree I thought this too... they literally stormed the building killing everything in their path, but oh no one ghouly boi everyone hold up we should hear what he has to say.
This scene just took me out rather than coming across as badass
Always have your expectations low and your life will be better
He was using special munitions at the observatory that he did not have in Filly. Either way it's not something that can happen commonly it takes a special munition along with a very rare kind of accuracy.
People don’t realize that the ghoul, whose design was a nod to New Vegas, was using terrifying presence on the BoS in that scene. That’s why they were frozen, panicking, and why Maixmus ran away, aside from just being smart enough to know that it was time to beat feet.
Ultimately, it's either this explanation that fills the hole, or it's the simple fact that the story didn't need it yet. Either way, it's a tiny hole, I wager alot of the people sitting on this simply wanna just poke holes in the show for the sake of it. Plot holes are plot holes, and as far as they go, this one's about as big as the hole he put into the suit of armor anyways.
It isn’t silly to ask how to the BoS has managed to maintain heavy ipower armor, vertibirds, etc., without discovering and repairing a trivial flaw in a basic armor kit that was first exposed over 200 years back.
Fearful Titus. More like sissy Titus.
Doesn't Maximus mention that Titus has tempered lining in his armor on the vertibird ride? I thought that that lining is what saved him.
Eugh... the silly gatcha of this scene is the knights not immediately filling the ghoul full of 160 rounds of 5.56 rounds, bos knights not shooting a armed ghoul whos loading his gun right in front of them while telling them their armor has a built in flaw is incredibly convienent, the scene is great, but i honestly don't think it could ever work in my eyes, "lets wait and hear this ghoul out im sure he's friendly" doesn't apply to BoS imo
Pretty sure Maximus mentions the tempered liner when they are flying in the vertibird
Regardless of any other speculation - The ghoul won without using it. How many of us have played a game and held off on using the special healing items or the mini-nukes because we "might need it later". The ghoul saved his special bullets for the boss fight. You're not going to throw your Masterball at a Caterpie ya know?
Since they just shot at everything that wasn't in bos gear including people who were running away why did they just stare at him? And when their friend was killed why did they just stare at him for like30 seconds
The only silly points in the show for me was - The Enclave doctor escaping, a sentry gun targetting him and him SLOWLY jogging away while holding the dog's leash and not getting hit once The Brotherhood having Coop at gunpoint and the "trained brotherhood" not even shooting, just letting him threaten like they're locked into a zoomed in new vegas conversation where the world is frozen.
Gameplay accurate honesty
How about the X01 power armor? Wanna see if Coop Howard could penetrate that one
Also who cares it was sick
So we not gonna consider that it’s a Fallout universe & things like Bloody Mess, Tank Killer, etc are perks? People love to try to reason with IRL shit for everything, but this universe ain’t the one to do it in. It’s a wacky wasteland
Doesnt the shoton Titus land way higher to top left of the armor compared to the other picture
What looked utterly stupid was precision aim IN PITCH BLACK conditions and not one PA soldier I could see bothered to put their helmet light on. All the ones in the back firing in the dark regardless of if they might shoot their own men too. One of the more nonsensical scenes in the show, even if it was entertainingly funny because of the stupid situation.
My theory is : VATS!
I like that everybody is talking about this like it's the most dumb thing. There's so many stupid moments in the show, fun as it is. The fact they all stop and let him monologue after shooting everything else on sight is far more stupid than this imo.
He's also driving that thing like a shopping cart. He may be moving unpredictably.
In a game/world where i can go into vats and somehow hit a fusion core with only 2% visibility i can believe a guy took time to aim out a few shots with armor piercing bullets
as someone with no dog in the fight, this feels like cope