Fallout show creators decided on their own to faithfully replicate the iconic power armor: 'Bethesda didn't know what we were doing'

A couple added features aside, the Fallout show's power armor is remarkably faithful to the suits found in the Fallout games: big, clumsy, ridiculous. They could've wound up looking very different, though, because according to Fallout show production designer Howard Cummings, Bethesda never insisted on adherence to the games.

«They didn't say, 'You have to do the game,'» said Cummings in an interview with PC Gamer this week. «They never said that. They said, 'Show us what you think it should be.'»

Cummings didn't know much about the Fallout games when he started working on the show, but after reading the script and researching the series, he says he «just loved it» and decided, «We have to try to recreate it as best we can.» Knowing the power armor would be his biggest task, it was the first thing he and prop masters Michael Jortner and Peter Gelfman started work on. That was a slight problem.

«It was so early on, Bethesda didn't know what we were doing quite yet, so they weren't sharing assets with me,» said Cummings. When they later showed Todd Howard and other producers what they'd been working on, the response was, «Oh, you're doing the game,» he recalled. 

Working with Bethesda was the opposite of some other production experiences he's had, where the source material's owner insisted on approving each and every detail. «I started turning to them, instead of the other way around,» said Cummings, because he knew fans were «going to analyze the heck out of» the show.

It's probably a good thing Bethesda wasn't breathing down his neck, because it sounds like the power armor was a hard enough project without any extra red tape. Generally, prop designers will put someone in a green or blue suit and stick pieces of sci-fi armor to them to create a reference for CG artists, says Cummings, but in this case, executive producer Jonathan Nolan «really felt it had to be a functioning suit.»

The power armor was initially modeled by concept artist Thang Le, and the designs were