Analyzing the Fallout 4 trailer

Last week the announcement came down that Fallout 4 is a thing that will be happening, and fans everywhere rejoiced. Personally I had my pre-order placed before the day was over.

There are lots of new and exiting things showcased by the trailer and we’re going to take a look at some of these details and see what we can figure out about the new game.

Before getting too far into this look at the trailer, one important thing needs to be brought up.  Rumors of Ron Pearlman’s departure from the series ended up being just that.  The trailer begins with voice over from a newscaster (voiced by Pearlman) as the war reaches it’s boiling point and the nukes that bring about the end of the world are fired and people evacuate to the vaults to take shelter from the nuclear fire.  The narration ends with the those three little words that are so iconic to the series, “War never changes.”

The first thing worth looking at in this trailer is that there is a limited amount of time spent showing the pre-war world and citizens evacuating their way to one of the series trademark vaults.

Could this be an intro level to the game?  The Fallout series has a well developed history for the years leading up to the nuclear Apocalypse.  Prior to this the only glimpse we have had of the old world was in Fallout 3’s Operation Anchorage in which the player character is dropped into a virtual simulation of the battle of Anchorage Alaska against the invading Chinese Communist forces.

Shot of the door to Vault 111 swinging open can confirm a return to form for the series for the player character being an individual freshly emerged from the isolated life underground into the harsh, unforgiving wastelands.  In previous leaks about the game Bethesda had confirmed that Fallout 4 would be heading back east, focusing on Boston this time.  Anyone who played Fallout 3 will know Boston as the site of the Commonwealth, the most technically advanced settlement in all of the Wasteland.  A place so advanced they are able to create androids that are almost entirely human.

And from the brief glimpse we get of the city I am getting kind of a Blade Runner vibe from it.

It would also seem that someone, presumably the Brotherhood of Steel, is tooling around the Wasteland in Vertabirds, and um……a zeppelin?  This is not the first time airships have appeared in the series.  The East Coast Brotherhood owes its existence to airships from California making a crash landing in Chicago.  Seeing one of these things airborne could mark this game as a prequel to Fallout 3.  Either that or they’ve gotten one airborne again and are using it as some kind of mobile command post.

Speaking of the Brotherhood of Steel, we catch a brief glimpse of this game’s steel knights.  From the little bit we see as a Vertabird lifts off, presumably carrying the player and a detachment of Brotherhood troops away from Boston, the trooper is wearing the T-51b power armor favored by the West Coast Brotherhood and not the T-45d that was seen prominently in the Capital Wasteland.  Given the Brotherhood’s mission to secure all pre-war tech to safeguard humanity from itself, it’s a safe bet that the Commonwealth is at odds with them.

The trailer comes to an end what is probably the most interesting development, the dog we have seen stalking the game world throughout the trailer approaches a man in a vault suit (presumably the player character) and the character speaks to the dog.  Many people are taking this as a sign that there will be no character customization in this installment of the series, a leak about the game last year from an ex employee for Bethesda stated that was the case, but that would be a very strange direction for the studio to take.

Any details we may have missed?

Any of your own theories to add about the game?

Feel free to share in the comments below.