UPDATE: This article references a Reddit post by a user who claimed to have inside information about Fallout 4's Boston-based setting. That user has since admitted the post was a flat-out lie, but like most good rumors it was believable. Given the series history, Boston felt like a strong setting. We'll know more when (if) any official announcements come from Bethesda.
Ready to get your Karma on?
Fallout 4's release date just got nudged from "who knows?" to "hopefully soon" following a teaser tweet from series voice actor Erik Todd Dellums. Dellums provides the voice for Fallout 3's radio host "ThreeDog" and sent a tweet to fans that a Fallout 4 announcement might be on its way.
To all my #Fallout3 and #ThreeDog fans: There may be more of the Dog coming! Fingers crossed!
— Erik Todd Dellums (@ETDellums) January 8, 2013
ThreeDog didn't divulge any more details, but he retweeted a response that indicated his work will be featured in Fallout 4 or, possibly, a movie. (An IMDB search turns up nothing being in production, so a film seems highly unlikely.) Since Fallout 4 is the most plausible scenario, fans are obviously wondering when we will hear more about the game.
(Sidenote: I lost a bet to a friend saying that we'd hear about a new Elder Scrolls game before Fallout 4, so I am obligated to admit that Dragos 119 is better than me.)
But, surprise, surprisre, there are already plenty o' rumors whirling about the disinformation superhighway, most of them concerning the setting for Fallout 4. The biggest rumor of them all is that Fallout 4 will be set in Boston and will focus, in part, on technology wunderschool MIT.
The Boston rumor sprung up wayyyy back in August as a result of a Reddit post from a user called fallout4boston. The poster said "the rumors are true, Fallout 4 will take place in Boston. In case you haven't heard, Bethesda has recently been scoping out and researching Boston. They also have a strong connection to MIT. I may or may not be an MIT employee. But that's really all I can say for fear of losing my job."
Now, Bethesda hasn't made any public comments about Fallout 4, save for Dellum's tweet (which he says was approved before he posted it). But the Boston-based rumors make sense in terms of what's going on in the Fallout universe. The Commonwealth, referenced in Fallout 3 by Dr. Zimmer, is described by the Fallout Wiki as "what is left of the pre-War American state of Massachusetts in New England." It's also mentioned in all of the Fallout 3 expansions, The Pitt, Broken Steel and Point Lookout. Fallout: New Vegas aside, the series is bit heavy on the East Coast settings so a trip to Beantown makes sense.
As does the inclusion of MIT. There are numerous references to "the Institute" in the Fallout series. According to the Fallout wiki, the institute is "a mysterious organization within the Commonwealth. It is known to possess advanced technology, including the ability to produce androids of high enough quality to pass as humans."
'Fallout 4: Blade Runner' anyone?
Seriously, though, MIT makes perfect sense as the setting for the Institute. First, 'Institute' is already in the name. Second, it is arguably THE premiere school for technology in the U.S. Third, it's in Boston which is the heart of The Commonwealth. The whole android angle also has a lot of potential for the good karma/bad karma system that is unique to the Fallout series. Will saving androids who think they're human help your karma? Or is it a wasteland no-no to let a machine that looks and acts human slip away unharmed? In a world of gatling-laser packing Super Mutants and Radscorpions the size of a Buick, is a human-sized robot really something to worry about anyway?
OXM ran a pretty solid wishlist a while ago, so Bethesda definitely knows what fans WANT from Fallout 4. But if you're a PS3 owner and a Skyrim fan, you probably want them to finish the damn Dragonborn DLC already before launching another title.
