Given the very small, detailed nature of Bethesda's games, we can assume the next Fallout will also take place in a limited geographical area. One of the reasons Fallout 3 works is because of the iconic nature of many locations in and around DC. The question is whether there is another location that could provide the same sense of amazement. Perhaps NYC, but even that city has fewer iconic locations.

I also wonder about when the story should take place. Each of the RPG's has taken place after the previous, but the downside is that the world has to slowly improve over time and then you lose the fun of the setting. So maybe the next game should happen closer to the time of when the nukes fell.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

China! At the same time as Fallout 1. While the Vault dweller wanders the wastes in the west someone in China deals with what happened over there.

I think it's time to dive into China's perspective of the war. You could really go crazy since it's a wide open concept, with rather little information. It would be the survivors of the other side.

Maybe Chicago or NY? Or maybe Atlanta? I agree that nothing could really match the power of the post-apocalyptic ruins of DC with all of its monuments and significance to the country.

As for a timeline, I would personally love to see a scenario where the player is born, is toddler, child, etc. before the bombs fall. You could see how the world is and get a feel for it, maybe even see part of it, before the nuclear holocaust. Maybe your family has Vault-Tec vault reservations, but something goes wrong, and you and your father are separated from your mother and a sibling. You manage to take shelter in a home bunker or conventional fallout shelter, but your father dies. Maybe you get raised by a Mr. Handy. Fast forward 10 or so years, and we get to experience the Fallout world in the beginnings of its post-apocalyptic stages, with a decade being enough time for small settlements or groups to form.

Main quest could be trying to locate your mother and sibling to see if they survived. You don't know if they made it to the Vault or not. You were too young to remember the Vault the family had reservations for. First stop - nuked home. Maybe you find out certain neighbours looted supplies, papers - you start tracking them down, etc.

Anyway, that's what I think would be cool. Still unsure of a location though.

I was in the middle of typing my vote for Philadelphia (due to its historical significance and, yes, proximity to my hometown) when I saw mutantlove's suggestion of China. I have to say that's a pretty compelling idea. It certainly comes with a whole new host of challenges (voice-overs come to mind, I do NOT want to hear Moira attempting a Chinese accent), but I suspect Bethesda wouldn't back away from a challenge.

Mmmm... then again, there may be some nationalistic sensitivity in that situation. We can't forget that Americans are generally pretty open-minded when it comes to depictions of sacred landmarks being destroyed. That may not go over well in other countries.

I would definitely prefer to see a setting where things are starting to come back together. I would prefer that FO4 take place back in California, sometime after FO2.

The only problem I see with making Fallout 4 set in a different country is that by necessity you would lose a lot of the 1950s-style Americana and retro-futurism. Frankly I'm not sure it would still feel like Fallout without those things. And unless we discover the Enclave is operating in a foreign country, the BOS went there, or Vault-Tec had foreign offices (all highly unlikely) we would lose all connections completely except for the genre being post-nuclear apocalypse. :shrug:

Not to mention if it is China and I have to listen to a bunch of Asians talk about the glorious rebirth of Communism I will not get much interaction out of the game as it will turn into a socialist bloodbath

If it's moved to a differenct country it should have a different name and be a spin off that takes place in the FO universe but not a fallout titled game.

I"d vote Houston, San Antonio, or Corpus Christi maybe.... but then again I'm a Texan!

That's actually an excellent point. I should know better, really... the entire magic of Fallout is the atmospheric clash of 50s-era paranoia/optimism with the scorched, rusty landscape. Good call.

Philly it is!

bethesda should really piss off the NMA crowd, set it back out west, ten years after fallout 2.

merge up all of the locations of the first two games and go nuts with them all in beautiful 3D glory.

i'm just wary of more "great east coast cities" fallout games. i mean, in a nuclear scenario, the east coast is pretty much the most dense set of targets outside of western europe.

the true-to-science! vs. artistic license (well used, and for excellent effect, i must say) of having so much of downtown D.C. still standing in fallout 3 might have been riding a razor's edge already.

bring it back to cali.

we'll get to see more towns, deal with more factions, get involved in politics... all with the added bonus of being able to check back in with all our old friends from the first two.

I think those things don't make the game Feel like fallout they just remind you of it. To feel like Fallout to me, the main character must overcome incredible odds of survival, encounter/discover some really odd looking creatures/people, and have Epic Battles in the Ruins of a Post Nuclear war setting. Everything else is just culture and flavor, China FTW!

I like the idea of it being set in another country, of which my vote would be the UK, most likely set around london, some great landmarks there for feeling (ruined big ben and houses of parliment, white hall, 10 downing street etc - plus the underground system there also links in). Not too far a stretch to imagine that vault-tec perhaps had dealings there, as I would assume the UK and US have quite close relations in the fallout universe much like in RL.

It would be nice to see the game from another countries perspective, but china may be just too far of a stretch for the fallout series I think. Also I choose UK, as thats where im from .

Though, perhaps fallout 4 could be a semi remake of fallout 1/2, set in the same areas, around the same time. Could be intresting too.

As a Brit, I'd love to see Fallout 4 set in England, considering the fact that culture was landlocked in the 50's, I'd really love to see some wastelanders taking tea at the edge of a radioactive crater.

I mean, think about it - we don't have any troubles about our national landmarks getting blown up (I think V for Vendetta cleared that one up nicely), and post-bomb London would be one hell of a sight to see. Imagine scouting through the ruins of Buckingham palace, or climbing the Black Tower, now infested with Ghouls.

God, I want that so HARD.

I'd prefer the series proper to stay in the US, but I don't see why e.g. a Fallout spin-off couldn't be set in the post-nuclear Soviet Union, with an atmospheric clash of their 50s-era paranoia/optimism (e.g. Socialist Realism instead of Googie and Art Deco) with the scorched, rusty landscape.

In my opinion that is the best idea yet for a timeline. I want to see Fallout before the...erm...fallout. This world is very much LIKE ours and UNLIKE ours in the 50's, I want to see the contrasts and comparisons before everything was brown and rusting. There is some serious potential in this idea...

I've been convinced the the first module, or FO 3.5, or expansion, will take place in some area to the north, with a greater availability of advanced technology and somewhat more sociopolitical organization. A sort of commonwealth, if you will, that is maybe a little less wastey than the (DC) Wasteland.

China is a brilliant idea. Perhaps also for something modular rather than the full-on Fallout 4, given the absence of Americana. I think playing immediately after the Great War would be even less Falloutish.

But FO1 & 2 did fine out west without iconic architecture and a New York City FO4 would work fine. A lot of new structures could have been built after the war, new little towns, just as New York City used to have (e.g., Greenwich Village really was a village called Greenwich). Keep the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings, and that's as much iconic stuff as you need. Lots of subway and train tunnels, maybe keep Yankee Stadium (divergence happened and no new Yankee Stadium is ever built) or the World's Fair grounds or the iconic New York Public Library with the lions out front, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (it has knights in armor and famous old swords...oh, the possibilities...and its northern branch the Cloisters has even more stuff), farms in Central Park, battles in the narrow streets of the Wall Street area, there's even a decomissioned aircraft carrier already here, the Intrepid. Maybe the mafia survives the great war and is the dominant faction, maybe the whole place is run like some parody of existing corporate/financial structure, with people wearing armored business suits.

Another FO4 possibility would be to play as a ghoul or super-mutant (or some new variant of post-human) who has heard of a cure and is trying to become human.

There are several places and times that would look good.
U.S.A.: A destroyed Las Vegas (we had that in the last Resident Evil film though), Disney Land, Grand Canyon... It would be nice to see some effects from Fallout 1-3 so it should happen at a later time.
:vaultboy: China: As they were the opponent in the Great War it would be fun to see the other side.
:sadvaultboy: Europe: Any number of old places, castles or cities, pictures of destroyed cities are easy to come by, just use some from WW2

Playing a ghoul (or supermutant) as an option sounds nice but it should only be an option. something like this needs more conversation options and reactions from the npcs.

I would like to see the next fallout game take a single state, perhaps one of the central states, say like Kansas or something like that, and make it the focus of the game. I would like to see something around the same time as Fallout 3 (200 hundred or so years after the bombs) where a group like the NCR is starting to form and they run are dealing with raiders, the Enclave, maybe some new factions. From there you can either be a vault dweller, or a raider, or whatever, maybe the character creation process can be expanded to let you choose where you come from? So as this new government tries to unify the entire state you can choose to help, hinder, or whatever in teh classic fallout way.

Personally I would like to see a game where the focus is not on some big bad (like the master or the Enclave) instead have them as a factor yes, but not the central aim. I would like to see a game where the central aim is the formation of this new government in this particular state. I can see quests where you have to go and deal with a group of raiders or something that are a threat to a town in this new government, perhaps even have to deal with a small alliance of towns resisting this new government, negotiate settlements join, all sorts of stuff like that. Or you can play the role of the villain where you set out to destroy them or just be a general hell rasier and a head ache. I think that would be a really cool idea myself. Not sure if my points came off all that clear though.

fall out seems to be a stereotypical american game, so since i would love a post apocalyptic version of russia, europe or china, it wouldn't make sense ( but ofcourse for a spin off on another continent) ... Ofcourse the netherlands might be fun, but it probaly would be atleast overflooded for more than the half, the sunken city of amsterdam, the green sea full of chemicials and radiated stuff of rotterdam might make perfect sense to me (even without the fall out universe) ... hench rotterdam is one of the biggest harbours in the world in our reality (it used to be the biggest harbour in the world, but i believe we lost the place to this damn chinese) ... trough i can think about former dutch ghoul engineers trying to glorify the netherlands again in artifcial islands

small spoilers;

I wonder, when I talked to dr zimmer, in rivet city and he was talking about people living in the dump named rivet city, and being lucky that he finally could go from that dump, and wonderd how people could life in that dump, and was talking something about a commenwealth, so i might be thinking hell there might be a real government somewhere in the states, i'f it's good or bad i don't know but it doesn't sound that strange (the war was 200 years ago), i guess there is somewhere near the capital wastelands a 'real goverment', or atleast more than the anarchistic wannebe governments in the capital wastelands, maybe the enclave have maked a real government somewhere near the capital wastelands ... The mainquest line shouldn't be to hard to think over you can join them, or you can be a rebel against them ... yeah i heard of the california republic, might also be intresting ...

intresting thougts ...

Thanks. The 'taste' you get of a pre-War world in the MQ of FO3 made me hungry for more. Plus, I think it would be really neat to be interacting with people that used to have normal lives, who may have guilt or personal responsibility in the Great War. We would get the chance to actually be the very first to loot some locations. Most of the Vaults would still be functional or right in the middle of their experiments. The timeline really has a lot of unique potential I think.

I'd actually like to see what happens over in Europe and Asia.

China as the setting for the next Fallout series is a capital idea! I'll love Beth more if ever they do this.

I think it should take place about 2 weeks after the bombs fall. That would make for some interesting gameplay. Perhaps in Texas.

It seems obvious that they are setting the story up for Fallout 4 to take place in the "Commonwealth" of Mass. The same way that Morrowind Had plenty of clues about a sequel taking part in the Oblivion Dimension. The only places really mentioned in the game are "Back West" in CA, China, the Capitol Wasteland, and the Commonwealth. My guess is they do a Boston based Fallout, with the "Institute" being based out of the MIT Campus, so it would have to include Cambridge as well. Just think of some of the cool locations! Bunker Hill Monument, Harvard Yard, Fenway Park and Landsdowne St, Downtown Crossing... The cool thing about this city for a location is that, unlike DC, it's small enough to be completely rendered into a game, so you will get the whole feel of it. The T will be great for firefights as well.

Chicago, where Tactics took place, is also mentioned.