So, lately I've had this theory and figured I'd share it here. This is 100% pure speculation and is based on absolutely nothing.

In several gameplay videos, they show a (presumably) early game quest where you meet a potential companion named Preston Garvey, and you can help him and his team of Minutemen fight off some raiders. They've shown that part of the quest will involve the player using a suit of Power Armor to fend off the raiders, then a Deathclaw.

Now, heres an idea of what I think might happen; After you defeat the Deathclaw, a scripted event occurs where the dying Deathclaw makes one last (unavoidable) desperate attack on the player, heavily damaging the Power Armor and rendering it useless.

After the Power Armor is nearly destroyed by the Deathclaw, the player will then collect the pieces of the armor and rebuild it, thus starting the Power Armor crafting tutorial. Since the armor was in shambles and you're putting it back together, this would justify why the starting Power Armor is very weak and would need to be further upgraded throughout the game.

I don't expect that this is how it will go in the game, but if I was a game designer, this would be how I would do it. It would add context for a tutorial and it would prevent early game Power Armor from being too game breaking since it's barely functional.

Thoughts?

You are not alone! I saw a similar theory a couple months back on this forum!

Personally, I think that Power Armor cores are rare and only give about 15 minutes of use. So you can use the Power Armor whenever you want and will be given Power Armor cores for essential Power Armor missions, but it is not something that you can use that often. Having the Power Armor destroyed so much that it is rendered completely inoperable would be extremely hazardous to the pilot. Just think of how many times the Jaws of Life need to be used to save car accident victims.

That's actually quite an interesting theory! I wouldn't be surprised if something very similar to this happens in the game.

I'm betting what we saw in the video was not the same grade of power armor we'll see in the actual game. What we saw was a promo reel. They have set up E3 promo stuff in previous games; sometimes there are remnants in the ESM modules. I bet what we'll get in-game will be rather junky all things considered, but most early-game stuff usually is.

There is also the possibility that we don't get to keep the Power Armor since we are only borrowing it from the Minuteman. So the Minuteman quest is just a teaser to power armor combat and we get our power armor later in the game.

This sounds much more plausible then my theory. The armor they showed in the video was the newest model, the T-60. Of course they would want to show off the the brand new Fallout 4 Power Armor in the big reveal trailer. As you said, it is more likely the armor we get first will be something crappy, like the T-45 from Fallout 3.

If the minutemen were capable of acquiring the armor, and using it... What was stopping them from doing so and not involving the PC?

Maybe after you beat the quest, you can train the Minutemen to use the armor (in a role-reversal of Fallout 3 and New Vegas, where the player had to have someone teach them to use the armor). And since they now have a walking tank, they no longer need Preston to protect them, and that's what makes him available as a follower?

Or perhaps the fact that his group has been decimated, and close to being completely wiped out, Preston decides that he no longer is fit to lead, but offers his services as a companion in thanks for saving the surviving members of the minutemen

the only thing that i can point out in this theory is that once part of the combat promo reel showed the power armor with a jet pack/jump set set up which was then shown again in the walk through without the jetpack/jump jet setup

My guess is that the PC being a pre war survivor somehow has the know how to operate technology that a wastelander doesn't.

They simply don't know how to operate the stuff. If you think about it even the simple power symbol on any computer doesn't really hint at its function unless you know what it means. If you didn't know the symbol for speakers how long would it take you to discover how to mute or turn up the volume or balance mix a surround sound system. That kind of stuff, I can see a pre war denizen(Especially a veteran of any sort) having way more knowledge on how to operate power armor than an uneducated wastelander.

My other guess is that it isn't theirs in the first place. From what I saw it is inside an old crashed vertibird. Something tells me the minutemen don't know how to fly those and it is a relic of either the brotherhood or even a pre-war crash site.

Yeah, as I stated in another thread, I believe the Sole Survivor starts with the Power Armor Training as a member of the pre-war military. I believe this will be a recurring theme in Fallout 4, that the Sole Survivor is valuable because she / he has pre-war knowledge that few others possess.

Simply put, the Minutemen don't have PA training, and know that Power Armor is POWER armor, it isn't something you can pick up on the fly. Operating a mobile tank suit takes some experience.

Remember that the power armor is found in a crashed Vertibird on a roof somewhere. It's quite possible that it is actually Brotherhood armor that you're saluaging, explaining why the armor is there without anyone that knows how to use it, since it isn't actually the Minutemen's armor. It could also explain how the armor could be reasonably gimped, with the explanation that it was damaged in the crash.

This point is great, because the Sole Survivor grew up basically for everything went to utter [censored] via nuclear holocaust. They would be a Follower's wet dream as they would be able to at least provide details on historic events which are muddled and now lost. The mere fact they lived in the golden age before Nuclear-Fallout means his value increases ten fold as a result for a plethora of different reasons...