@Hassknecht
This is a thread about energy weapons so you can expel some text if you want about how real things work really. Feel free to ignore.
The Glock is just a shitty pistol. Yeah Winchester is a real company.
Glock is a real company, too ^^
I feel like we barely know squat about Energy Weapons. Who made laser/plasma weapons if not the U.S. Military/Contractors? Are the energy weapons in Fallouts 1 and 2 supposed to be the same as the energy weapons in New Vegas? Why do energy weapons (in New Vegas) look so cheap?
I'm not saying these questions have to be answered. It's just odd that with Power Armor, Vaults and Robots we have lore to give context as to why they exist and why they're seein in the games - but for energy weapons there really isn't anything like that. (At least, as far as I'm aware.)
It has already been answered who made the energy weapons, additionally the Gatling Laser in Fallout 1/2 was made by Heckler & Koch. There's also the Yuma Flats Energy Consortium that made the pulse rifle and pistol in Fallout 2.
It's not just military either, the laser pistol in Fallout 1/2 is specifically a civilian model, so we know that energy weapons were, to some degree, available to civilians as well.
The energy weapons in Fallout 1/2 and New Vegas kinda overlap, but New Vegas also has the Fallout 3 energy weapons. So the laser pistol, plasma pistol, laser rifle, and plasma rifle are from Fallout 3, but the plasma defender and plasma caster are supposed to be the ones from the classics. Gatling laser looks too different as well.
As for why they look cheap, well, that's mostly down to design choices of the arts department. Particularly the plasma rifle and pistol have this rather fragile pulp scifi look to them because Bethesda really went for the 1950's look, and that carried over. The laser rifle is actually one of the few designs I really like from the 3D games, it looks rugged and really what a real life laser rifle might look like.
