So...I just got myself to thinking...

According to info we have, from the E3 presentation and otherwise...We emerge from Vault 111, as a 235 year old person...That is, precisely, 200 years after the bombs...

...200 years...

...

I just realized, this means Fallout 3 has not happened yet at this point...

It is expected that it will be after Fallout 3, since the Brotherhood is there, unless the Brotherhood was already there in the first place. Which is unlikely.

According to the official timeline, the bombs dropped in 2077, which means, we arise from the Vault in 2277.

...Which is the exact same year the prologue for Fallout 3 ends, and the game proper begins with James leaving Vault 101 on August 17th, 2277.

Didn't the bombs drop in October?

People have speculated that its the midwest BoS that's in Boston not the one we find in FO3. Though Todd did say you emerge 200 years later I think he might have just simplified it to that instead of saying some thing like "237 years later".

October, 2077, that is correct. So, by this correlation, Fallout 4 is taking place ROUGHLY at around the same time as the events of Fallout 3, unless it's assumed the events of Falloout 3 were tackled I n a relatively short span of time, say a few months.

Hell...consider my surprise reading this timeline and finding out New Vegas takes place in 2281, only four years after Fallout 3.

yes

Also add on, how long is the transition between Vanilla and Broken Steel? A couple months?

I dare say, while we're roaming Boston, the War for the Glorified Britta Filter is still being waged in DC.

id be fine with 2277 but id hope for 2285 ish , id like my lore fix but could live without it. even if its set 2277 the game could span 10 years or more remember you can build settlements which is going to take a few years to get up and running

Following on from this idea, I actually believe that our protagonist will emerge in 2284, which would be 3 years after the events of New Vegas. There are reasons for this that have to do with my big theory I've been working on since the trailer was released. Hopefully within the next day or so, it will be ready for me to post. As a side note, I believe that the dates our family were thawed out have a connection with the events of Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

So far, the only thing we have to work with number wise, is the constantly repeated mention of 200 years, which is what I'm basing this on.

I may be wrong, but I THINK Todd Howard is on record mentioning we emerge 235 years old, so if we go in at 35 years old, that is 200 years precisely from when the Bombs dropped in October, 2077.

When talking about timelines that go beyond merely a few years, it is actually quite common to use an approximation. Best example, although perhaps a little extreme, is what we know about the dinosaurs. We are told that they died out "65 million years ago". Do you really think that the actual figure is that exact? Of course not. Now scale that down to the "200 years" that we spent in stasis, and you can quite easily assume that this is also an approximation. The other fact that we have to consider is that if the devs told us the exact date (which I think is actually 2284, which is 207 years after being frozen), they would then be committing to a far more specific date in relation to other events that we know of, nearly 4 months before the game ships. Perhaps they still want to keep this under their hat.

It was actually during an interview with Pete Hines, and the way he said it suggests that we start off as a 35 year-old, and then continue roughly 200 years later. This would make sense if you look at it in the context of my example above.

My God lol, you guys overthink everything, haha (in a good way!). But yeah, my guess is the "200 years later" thing is just a generalization, but who knows. It could be just 2277.

Not to mention that codsworth say the number 200 years to, so unless his databanks are glitchy (completly plausible after 200+ years) it is set in stone that it will be 200 after you go into the vault.

It's such a small thing, and yet it blows my mind.

They've said the game takes place ~10 years after Fallout 3.

If that is true, it would mean 200 years later is a continuational error on part of the writers, or they retconned the whole date of when the bombs fell

Or they rounded down.

Bethesda has said that they'll only let the Fallout universe move forward, meaning they'll never go back in the timeline. Fallout 4, therefore, has to take place sometime after late-2077. I've read that Fallout 4 takes place anywhere between right after to 10 years after the events of Fallout 3 and the DLC. We know that Fallout 3 starts on August 17th, 2077, and ends several months later. The Great War starts on October 23rd, 2077, so it's entirely possible that the PC emerges from Vault 111 right around 200 years later. One would assume that a robot such as Codsworth would at least remain precise within a year, so because he said we're about 200 years late for dinner, we're probably going to be starting the game in late 2077.

Codsworth actually makes a tongue-in-cheek remark about our protagonist having not eaten properly for 200 years. Considering he has been programmed with a sense of humour (same model able to tell jokes in Fallout 3), this would still make sense at this stage as being an approximation. If you look at the dialogue options, there is an alternative one that says '200 years'. I have a feeling that if you choose this option, Codsworth will say something along the lines of, "well, 207 years to be precise".

Mr Handies are not accurate robots. They are handy They spoke more like normal persons. They don't do the 'You are too late 211 years, 47 days, 6 hours, 35 minutes and 52 seconds' stuff.

My reckoning is 2287. I'm sure it has been said it is set 10 years after Fallout 3, which starts proper in 2277.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline

Didn't they say "somewhere around 200 years"

Actualy totaly forgot about that realy bad humor programing of the mr. Handies. Guess you could both be totaly right

Two weeks. Three-dog blabs about it on the radio every so often.