Upcoming: Fallout 4

2008 saw the release of the long awaited Fallout 3. After the franchise had been recently purchased by Bethesda, they wasted no time in starting on production of the next installment and gave the world one of the best games to have been released in the past decade. Role Playing Games (RPGs) are often among the most detailed and finely crafted gaming experiences a person can buy and offer hundreds of hours of content. I've played through Fallout 3 multiple times and I refuse to add up all of my play-time hours because that'd probably be a really depressing number.

But it's been five uneventful years since Fallout 3 and Bethesda continues to tease us. They recently announced that they have officially closed the doors on Skyrim and will be moving on to their next project. Anyone with a brain should be hoping that that next project is Fallout 4.

Between Jason Bergman, developer and senior producer at Bethesda Softworks and Erik Todd Dellums, voice actor of Three-Dog, both teasing at it's eventual existence (among a few other teasers Bethesda has released), I'm just going to act like Fallout 4 has already been announced and it's production is underway. Please keep in mind that all of these predictions are simply my own thoughts so you can take them with a grain of salt.

Many people have been speculating as to where the next game might take place. We can already likely narrow down the country. Every game so far has taken place in America. I could see an add-on being set in a different, equally war-torn nation, but since this game will have a number at the end of it's title, that means it's part of the main series, so it will likely be in the United States.

The most recent installment, Fallout: New Vegas, which was an add-on to Fallout 3 as well as a full game, takes place in Las Vegas, as the title suggests. Because that game was in a location from Wasteland, it might be safe to assume that the next game will also take place in a Wasteland location.

What? Don't know what I'm talking about? Didn't know that Fallout is essentially a remake of the 1988 post-apocalyptic, Apple II game, titled Wasteland? The games are all just littered with references. To name just a few:

• Wasteland features a Brotherhood of Steel lookalike faction, referred to as The Guardians who are based in a fortress dubbed The Citadel.
• Power Armor is originally from Wasteland and was called the same thing.
• Ghouls from Fallout appear in Wasteland but are called a variety of names, including Ghoul.
• Robots appear in Wasteland.
• Deathclaws are essentially just a renamed version of Shadowclaws which are mutated Iguanas from Wasteland.
• In Fallout 3, the Children of Atom are a nuclear bomb worshipping cult. In Wasteland, a cult that worships nuclear bombs call themselves Servants of the Mushroom Cloud.
• The Wasteland Survival Guide is named after Wasteland's game guidebook.
• In the first Fallout game, ZAX are advanced supercomputers. In Wasteland, VAX is a recruitable and highly advanced robot NPC.
• In Fallout 3, the character Brick says she loves turning mutants into a "fine red mist" which was one of the descriptions that Wasteland used to describe it's combat deaths.
• Three-Dog jokes that his toaster needs fixing; a reference to the Toaster Repair ability from Wasteland.
• In Wasteland, the first quest given to the Desert Rangers is to fix a water-pump (sound familiar?).
• A fully sentient AI villain who wants to replace the inhabitants of the world with the genetically superior is the main antagonist of both Fallout 3 and Wasteland.

Sorry if your life is now a lie.

So what does any of that have to do with predicting the setting of Fallout 4? Well, Las Vegas is a location within Wasteland and if that weren't enough in both games it's an area that remained relatively untouched by the apocalypse. Therefore, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that Bethesda may be taking Wasteland locations into consideration. Much of that game takes place in the Southwest and Southern United States. This combined with the fact that Fallout Tactics 2, a game which never saw the light of day, was going to be set in Florida, leads me to believe that a Southern setting could be highly possible.

Besides that, I think another likely location would be in New York City, but for totally different reasons. Sure, us Americans are all familiar with our own country but Fallout is an internationally renowned series and NYC is a place that's recognized by people worldwide. Personally, I hope that this is not the case for the game, mainly because NYC as a setting is so overdone and has been featured in literally hundreds of movies and video games to date.

Besides that, I think a Southern setting would be intriguing because it's not the kind of place that is not often explored in gaming, so it would be a unique idea. The only other thing I can think of that would be like it would be Point Lookout the DLC add-on for Fallout 3, which was similar to a deep-south bayou. If Bethesda could do that on a small scale, then it's totally possible to make a bigger version of it for a full game. Furthermore, people think that NYC would be better because it's so iconic but personally, I think that the game would benefit by being somewhere that is the exact opposite, not iconic. That way the developers would have plenty of space to create their own ideas without being hindered by having to include things like Times Square or the Empire State Building.

However, if Fallout 4 simply must take place in a city, I think a much more interesting location would be Boston. Boston is a lot smaller than NYC and it's size is similar, but somewhat bigger than D.C. so it would be an alluring location for the next Fallout game. As the lore goes, after the war MIT becomes a mysterious faction called The Institute which is eventually what becomes referred to as the Commonwealth, who is responsible for all of those blasted robots we love so much, including androids so that would surely play into the game. I think that this idea is much more interesting than NYC.

As far as the plot goes, it's difficult to make an accurate prediction but we can speculate based on what we already know about the lore. Every Fallout game so far has had some circulation around water. Fallout was about fixing your Vault's water-pump; Fallout 2 the wasteland is suffering from drought so you need to find the G.E.C.K. to return life; Fallout 3 there's Project Purity which is the plan to purify all the water in the Capital Wasteland; and in Fallout: New Vegas there's the fight for the Hoover Dam. Without water there can be no life, so it seems reasonable that it's the main focus of a post apocalypse story. Also the games often follow a similar formula. They start with something simple and eventually develop into a horrific plot that threatens the entire Wasteland, so keep that in mind when you're thinking about the future game.

So considering this, it's safe to say that the next game will likely have something to do with the never-ending fight over water. I would guess  that the Enclave would return but considering the state they've been left in at the end of Fallout 3, it's probable that they were never able to recover and died out. Perhaps Fallout 4 would feature a different faction of the Enclave that's based in a new region.

What would be more interesting would be if the Brotherhood of Steel were your enemies. They were good guys in Fallout 3, sure, but if you ever spoke with the Outcasts, they'd tell you that the D.C. Brotherhood is acting alone and, in the Outcast's opinion, is too involved in the needs of the people who live here. In other words, they're saying the Brotherhood should pursue it's main objective, that is collecting technology, with little regard for the wellbeing of anyone else. I could certainly see this mentality leading to the Brotherhood being seen as bullies, going around threatening civilians and such.

If the game is set in Boston, it would be very likely that The Commonwealth and the androids would be playing a big part and they would probably be the bad guys.

Date and time have never been important facets in the Fallout lore. The games are all relatively within the same time period but they never interact with each other so as far as the average gamer is concerned, the continuity is not important. That being said, I mentioned before that Dellum gave a tease a year or so ago. It was a tweet that said, "To all Fallout 3 and Three-Dog fans: there may be more Three-Dog coming! Fingers crossed!" That leads me to believe that Three-Dog's voice will again be accompanying us during our travels throughout the wastes which could conceivably mean that Fallout 4 will be taking place within only a few years of Fallout 3, but be that prior or subsequent is still up in the air.

As the months roll on and still no official statements are made, it's seeming more and more likely that Fallout 4 will see a Next-Gen release and, considering that it hasn't even been announced yet, there's certainly a lot of time between that fateful day and now. I'm following Three-Dog's instructions. I'm crossing my fingers in the hopes that Bethesda isn't about to come forward with Rage 2 or some other bullshit and that they get right on it with the next Fallout. It's been five years and the world it ready for another adventure in the post apocalypse.