Fallout 4 announced with official trailer

Bethesda Softworks has finally, officially announced Fallout 4, a project they've been working on for a long time. In real Bethesda fashion, they waited until they had a full trailer including in-game footage to show the public before even talking about the project, even though it was common knowledge that Fallout 4 had been in the works for a while.


Bethesda also opened up pre-orders on Fallout4.com, for those still buying into the notion that there's any value in pre-ordering that far out, or ever.

The trailer's a deliberate callback to the original Fallout intro, including a slow zoom out on an old television and the traditional Ink Spots song. What is presumably the main character is seen wearing a Vault 111 jumpsuit. It looks like Fallout 4 will be set in Boston, which looks even more advanced than the Fallout world did in Fallout 3 -- robots and neon lights are everywhere.

It also looks like the game will have a voiced protagonist, which would be a significant break from every other Fallout game so far. It's a shame that Bethesda is taking back the reins of the franchise, after the breath of fresh air that was Fallout: New Vegas and especially Old World Blues.

On the in-depth, obsessive side of things, The Vault has broken down the trailer into its base components and then some. Here's a snippet:

• The game is set in the Commonwealth, around the former city of Boston. The Paul Revere statue from North End is a dead giveaway.
• Diamond City, which appears to be built around Fenway Park, appears to be a major location and faction in the game.
• Other locations in the trailer include Bunker Hill, Scollay Square Olympia Theater, the Memory Den club and the Massachussetts State House.
• propnomicon of the /r/falloutlore subreddit speculates that the neighbourhood seen in the trailer may be located in Brookline, as the houses resemble prefabricated Lustron houses.
• A separate mention goes to the USS Constitution, which appears to have wound up in a bank after a rocket-boosted voyage. Thanks to Will van Horn for pointing this out!
• The inclusion of pre-War sequences indicates a playable tutorial sequence set before the Great War. This may also indicate that the game may be set shortly after the war.

Head on over to see a gallery of sixty annotated screenshots - and an image indicating that the Kotaku leak several months back wasn't entirely fake.