Fallout 4's story is shrouded in secrecy and that's very much deliberate according to Bethesda's Pete Hines.
“I would be stunned if we said anything else about the story ever again [prior to launch],” Hines told IGN. “We’re going to let everybody experience that in the game as much as possible. But there are certain trade-offs you have to make to build some amount of awareness to what the game is offering, so you’re willing to make some sacrifices.”
We do know some things about the game's story and setting from what Bethesda has revealed so far – on October 23rd, 2077 the protagonist and their family rush to Vault 111 after a nuclear war begins with China only to emerge as the only survivor of that Vault 200 years later. This is the first time a Fallout protagonist has had any firsthand experience of the pre-war years and the feeling of loss will be important to the game's story.
Events in the game are set in Boston, home of the technologically advanced Institute and we know Fallout 4's story was teased by Fallout 3, which strongly suggests the Institute and its android slaves will play a key role. We also know that the protagonist can romance the game's human companions.
Fallout 4 was announced back in June, mere months ahead of its November release and Hines says this was done to appease numerous internal departments at Bethesda and game director Todd Howard.
"If you ask Todd he’d probably prefer like a week or even a day between announce and launch,” Hines noted. “He tends to hate showing his stuff before it’s out because he’s a bit of a perfectionist and it takes a lot of time away from making the game to work on demos or presentations. It’s not that he doesn’t want to show fans what he’s making but every time he shows something he sees what’s wrong or what needs to be fixed.
“Ultimately we landed on six months, it felt like it worked for a game like this. We felt that it was highly anticipated. Obviously Bethesda Game Studios has a stellar reputation and it is both a Fallout 3 follow-up as well as a follow up to Skyrim which is well known throughout the world, and [we knew that] Fallout 4 would be something that would have a lot of buzz and noise around it and we didn’t need as long as you might for some other titles to kind of build that interest to launch.”
At present, Hines says the focus is very much on fixing bugs and other issues impacting the game before launch and while there has been discussion about post-release DLC and mod support "the team is one hundred per cent focused on the game itself."
Fallout 4 is set for release on PC, PS4, and Xbox One from November 10th.
