True for me too, but the writers get to pick the most "interesting" option to make canon.

In one of my other threads, I have suggested a 'fail-safe' option that would give the Institute a discrete means of accessing the vault.

Vault 111, unlike any of the other vaults that we have seen, is accessed from the top, rather than the side. The only reason it would have been designed this way is if it were critical to whatever is inside. And this would suggest that the vault is in fact designed to be very highly pressurised in various stages. The lowest pressure area would be the lift-shaft, as it is right near to surface level, and the highest pressure area would be the actual main vault (zone 4) containing the cryo pods, which would be underneath the other vault areas.

But what happens if, for example, an aeroplane drops out of the sky after the bombs fall, and lands directly on top of the vault. Even if the vault is not damaged in any way, you are then left with up to 450 tons of metal blocking your exit. And so you add a fail-safe. Underneath the vault, via a decompression chamber, you build a waterway, complete with submersible, as seen in at least one image in the concept art. You then lead the waterway to one of the many lakes in the Greater Boston area. Nobody would suspect that the waterway even existed, unless they were able to access this information at a later date, or if they were somehow involved in the design of the vault.

In both of these cases, we have the Institute.

They sent another group East way before they sent Lyons - the group that the player is part of in Fallout Tactics. It's probably that group that you run into in FO4.

Right the Midwestern Brotherhood of Steel. However the group that would go on to become the Midwestern Brotherhood was sent East in the 2100's. This was decades before the start of the war with the NCR that will end in their demise if they don't change or surrender. The group in Fallout 3 was sent East around the start of the conflict, so after that point they wouldn't continue sending men East when the biggest conflict they have fought to date was occurring. By the time of 3 the Brotherhood in the West is busy dying in their bunkers while the NCR is finishing them off. They wouldn't be sending another group like the one seen in Tactics or in 3 leading up to 2277. I do agree that it's most likely them in 4 now that it appears we have a solid date of 2277. If not them then some remnant of them as they don't appear to be in the best of places judging by mentions in 3 and New Vegas.

Right - which is why it's most likely that the Midwestern Brotherhood of Steel is the group we deal with in FO4.

Except we don't actually have a solid date of 2277. If we did, Pete would have just said "Yes, Fallout 4 is set in the year 2277". But he didn't. This is clearly a case of http://associatesmind.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/misdirection.png, as will be proved once the game is released in November.

EDIT: not to be too heavy-handed on the point, but I honestly don't think that anything the devs have said about this, including the tweet, can be taken as absolute confirmation

The Midwest Brotherhood.

I figure the airships could be either MWBoS or WCBoS.

The WCBoS had airships but the expedition to the Mid West crashed during a bad storm.

It makes sense that the WCBoS would have laid down new airships to replace the ones lost.

And they were not ready when Lyons headed East.

But if the MWBoS did well in the Mid West there is no reason they would not build airships so they could reach the WCBoS or the CWBoS.

It is 1000 miles from Chicago and Boston and 2000 miles between Chicago and LA.

With nothing but 200 year old roads, ruined cities, and major mountain ranges to cross it would have very slow going.

Wonder if Chicago will be the site of Fallout 5?

Comb all footage of the FO4 Pipboy to see if there's a date readout on any screen.

I really hope you're right...

Would it not then make sense that they had a few more years to accomplish this feat. So they would at least have been able to travel closer to the Commonwealth by the start of Fallout 4?

Obviously the date is quite integral to how the story will be panning out. How similar is this to when they were promoting New Vegas? Did they say 204 years later before the game came out or did they just generalize?

If I remember rightly, I think it was just referenced as being set some time after Fallout 3. I could be wrong though.

The difference here is that Todd and Pete are having to compare the timeline in the main game to that of the tutorial. And so you would expect them to just come out and mention the year if it wasn't a big deal. But even in the tweet, Pete is simply saying "what he said", referring to Todd's comments at the E3 showcase. They are sticking to their guns and being very careful how they word this, and I'm sure they will keep saying "200 years" right until launch day. And all of this means that the actual date is in fact very important.

One more item that points to exactly 200 years.

Desmond Lockheart from Point Lookout is one of the most fun NPCs in Fallout 3.

Also the most foul language one.

I certainly would love to see him in Fallout 4 or in one of the DLCs.

From his Fallout 3 wiki entry "If kept alive, Desmond disappears from the game after exiting the underground lab upon completion of A Meeting of the Minds. If talked to beforehand, he will mention traveling north to pursue his next rival, another "player" in the "Great Game," a Post-War struggle between former geniuses and billionares."

What would be the odds that one of the players of the "Great Game" would be using the Institute as his bolt hole and power base.

I'm thinking 99.99% cause if he or she didn't start there, they would certainly want to grab the prize before anyone else could claim it.

And having one of the "Great Game" "players" there pre war might explained why Boston survived the bombing so well.

Having the game start a few months after the Lone Wanderer started his journey would put him there about the same time as Dr Li and Dr Zimmer.

Now he could still show up four years after the events at Point Lookout, but Desmond doesn't seem the type to dilly dally.

Especially against a well entrenched enemy.

He would be trying to learn the lay of the land and sniff out any weaknesses without revealing his continued existence.

Or it could be that they actually do mean exactly two hundred years, ie you awake on October 23, 2277, and they haven't been cagey at all.

Like I've said I'd rather have it set after Fallout 3. The series needs to move forwards, not stay at the same time or roughly around. Personally I would rather it be a decade or 2 after but that's only if they are indeed using the Brotherhood we saw in 3. If they are making them into a nation of sorts, they would need a bit of time to expand.

Why? It's not like the Fallout series actually needs to have any connection between the different games other than the setting - and the further they push it into the future, the less the setting makes sense (because scavengers should have taken all the pre-war stuff from the old supermarkets, and people should have learned how to cut down trees and make proper houses rather than crappy shacks, and people should have learned how to clean up their home, and all that).

Bethesda's Fallout should really be set in the immediate decades after the Great War, not hundreds of years later - they're just not good at depicting a world that's had hundreds of years to recover, and don't seem to have any interest in doing so. Their 'always into the future' mantra is one of the things that makes it clear that they're terrible at creating a plot that fits with their world design.

I dont see why it has to keep jumping forward at all.

There is too much of the US to cover to move forward through time too much past great war, though. Everything will be rebuilt.

You could argue the same thing even if the entire series was set 50 years after the great war. But clearly the timeline allows for certain 'evolutionary changes' in the years since the bombs fell.

Then why did Pete not just clarify the matter by mentioning the actual year, when he was given a clear opportunity to do so?

Weird that it would be before New Vegas, though.

I think it won't be immediately after 3, just by virtue of the Brotherhood having an airship named Prydwen; I'd imagine they'd give us an advlt Arthur Maxson.

The first thing that would need to be rebuilt is industry itself. Civilization would have been set back irreparably for many after the nuclear devastation. And this is the first game in which we have actually been shown clear signs of reconstruction.

Haha, what if you get put back on ice, just when you think you're making some headway? And then wake up as..... an android! Just to mind [censored] you?

I always go tell Zoimmer where the android is....then after he pays me plug him with the neet plasma rifle Harkness asked me to use on him. It's like when Angel Eyes takes money from a target to waste the guy who put the contract on him in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

The series has to move forward. It's not like it has to move 1,000 years into the future but a few years to a decade would be nice. Otherwise the universe gets stale if the game is set only when everything is so close together. New Vegas and even Fallout 2 shows that when things progress in the series, things get more interesting. It allows for new circumstances to occur and groups to collapse or form. If New Vegas was only a year or 2 after Fallout 2, the game would be boring. The timeline moving forward allowed the NCR to become what it was, the Legion to become a strong nation, the state of the Brotherhood in the West. I wouldn't want the series to become a bunch of major events that all take place within the same year or a year or 2 apart from each other.

Ok so Maths time.

Fallout 3 Starts August 17th (My birthday so that's kinda awesome but back on topic) 2277.

Lets say that the Fallout 4 protagonist is sealed in the vault for an exact 200 years (because science loves those round numbers) and the great war started October 23 2077.

EXACTLY 200 years later is October 23 2277.

Between August 17th and October 23 is 67 days.

6+7=13,Fallout 3 has 7 letters in it, 7+3=10 13-10=3. Half Life 3 Confirmed

so that gives the Lone Wanderer 67 days to find his tricksy dad and literally save all the water from the Robo President.

This is enough time and I am alright with this.