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Bethesda Trademarks Fallout: Shadow of Boston [UPDATE]

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Exciting news everyone. Or not? Is this a hint towards the highly anticipated fourth part of the Fallout series or is this a spin-off for mobile devices? No one is certain at this point whether this is something to get hyped about or not, so take deep breaths and try to stay calm before jumping around like little crazy kids.

NeoGAF’s member ‘Labadal‘ has spotted the following link that basically confirms a new trademark submitted by Bethesda for Fallout: Shadow of Boston.

According to its description, this trademark could be for a computer video-game, a downloadable computer video-game, or for a TV video-game show. Do note that the ‘computer video-game’ description refers to consoles too, so no; this isn’t a PC-only game.

What’s really interesting is that Geoff Keighley – host of the VGX event – revealed a couple of days ago that he was in talks with the ladies that run Bethesda.

So, is Fallout 4 actually titled ‘Fallout: Shadow of Boston’? And will it be revealed at this year’s VGX?

As they say, wherever there is smoke there is also fire. So this could very well be the real deal here.

Enjoy and stay tuned for more!

[UPDATE]

Bethesda tweeted that this German registration is a hoax. As the big publisher claimed, this submit did not come from its offices.

“The German trademark filing that’s making the rounds is a hoax. This didn’t come from our offices.”

51 thoughts on “Bethesda Trademarks Fallout: Shadow of Boston [UPDATE]”

  4. I’m holding off my excitement for now. It could be a silly mobile game. Remember when we all got excited for the new Deus Ex?

    I’m definitely in the mood for a good Bethsda game – it’s coming up on 11/11 and I’m getting all nostalgic for Skyrim again. Something about the weather and pumpkin spice coffee, I think.

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          1. The last chapter killed it for me. You had all those weapons all those ugprades and the game decided to throw zombies at you….off bring the elites and the mecs.

        1. I like their games, but I think there is nothing to be excited about. Skyrim didn’t supported more than 2GB RAM on release (I don’t know what the hell they were thinking), and because of it most of the PC gamers who had more than 2GB just couldn’t run it.

          But it’s not just that. The game itself is the most casual in the series, and it lacks of replayability.

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          5. Weird, I think Skyrim has immense replayability thanks to mods. Normally you’d be looking in the wrong place if you were looking for replayability in a story-driven RPG. But Skyrim is probably the only single-player game where you can spend thousands of hours and not even notice it.

          6. But Skyrim is not story-driven.

            My biggest issue with the game is that the world doesn’t react on you anyhow. You can be a powerful mage, you can be a skillful thief, but it’s all the same to NPC. Even Morrowind had a basic standing system, so any NPC in the world depending on their faction can change their attitude towards you during the game.

            Moreover there is no “new” content in this game. You completed it as a mage? You won’t see anything new playing as a warrior. There is no different ways to complete quests. In some rare situations you just choose a side in the end, and that’s all.

            Game also allows you to gain maximum “rank” in a guild without skills, and it kills some amount of replayability. Sadly, you just need to do a quest line and you became a head of a guild.

            Funny thing in all this, is that they had New Vegas right under their noses, and they didn’t take anything from it: non-linear plot, non-linear quests, different factions, etc. And on the top of that, it also support mods.

          7. By story-driven I meant that there’s an overarching plot, along with certain objectives and goals. This is in contrast to true replayability in games where there isn’t a plot to drive the game forward. Of course Skyrim isn’t as deeply invested in the story as say, The Witcher 2, but what it sacrifices in storytelling, it more than makes up for in freedom and exploration.

            There’s a saying that Skyrim is as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle. I tend to agree… but I always felt the sheer amount of content and number of mods makes the game near flawless in value for money. And this is where I think the “replayability” comes in… you won’t be doing the same quest twice, but you will be playing the game regularly just for the new content coming out all the time. Moonpath to Elswyr, Falskaar, Wrymstooth… the list goes on.

          8. But any TES game is exactly a game where a story isn’t drive a game forward. The term story-driven RPG is for particular games that… well… driven by a story: pretty much any Bioware game, Witcher 1/2, etc. TES games allows you to do what you want and play a game fully, without investing your time in its story.

            As for “wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle”, I think I’ll disagree with this. There are a lot of games that can be deeper in many aspects. New Vegas is deeper and better in almost every way. Morrowind had a lot of things, good things, that were just thrown away.

            And that’s where the “casual” side comes in. They thrown away the things that can be considered as an obstacle for an casual gamer, like the guild hierarchy from Morrowind. They even thrown away stats! They thrown away so much so I can’t even say that Skyrim is an actual RPG. More like an adventuring game with perks.

            And we aren’t talking about mods, because we’re talking about Bethesda’s capability to deliver a good game.
            That’s where I become a sad panda, because so much people praise a game that aren’t actually THAT great, and it can cause troubles for the whole genre, since Bethesda thinks that Skyrim is Super B, so they will continue to do the same.

          9. I meant to say that Skyrim is story-driven because it has a plot and well-defined characters; it’s not something like say, Minecraft.

            And I think you misunderstood the phrase ” “wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle” a little. That phrase is referring to the fact that Skyrim has tons and tons of content, but not all of that content has too much significance, ie. depth. For example there are quite a few fetch quests, generic NPCs etc. I agree with that. But like I said, the freedom to literally be who you are and get lost in the game is what makes Skyrim so special. I mean if there was only one game in the world which I’d pick for 60$ to play on a deserted island, it’d be Skyrim. The amount of enjoyment you can get out of it is insane; even doing mundane tasks such as playing around with texture replacements is so much fun. And this cannot be excluded because modding is already part of the game, and it falls squarely on Bethesda’s shoulders to provide a product that has such an active community constantly working to turn a single game into an entire ecosystem. I mean you literally cannot have a TES game without mods; that’s how important a feature it is. And even if you don’t install a single mod, you can easily churn out more than 500 hours gameplay time with just the Legendary Edition alone. There is not another single-player only game in the world you can do that with (at least to my knowledge).

            I probably sound like a fanboy; but I just really love this game I have to admit. It just keeps me coming back.

          10. I understand what you meant, but “story-driven RPG” is a term, sub-genre for particular games. Most of the games out there has some type of plot and well-defined characters, and not all of them are story-driven.

            Besides, even if we just forgot about everything I said, it’s “story” “driven”, “driven by a story”. Skyrim is not “driven by a story”, even if it has a main plot. Actually it’s pretty close to Minecraft, except that Minecraft is a sandbox, and Skyrim is not. It has some type of sandbox elements, but cannot be called like that.

            And yes, I definitely misunderstood you with that reference about the poodle, but as for “not another single-player only game”, I mentioned New Vegas several times. It’s better in terms of quests, story and dialogs. Absolutely non-linear. It’s shorter than Skyrim, but the content is much deeper than that poodle. DLC is well designed and integrated in the main story. It also has a fair amount of mods. Most importantly, it’s a RPG game.

            I spent 300 hours in Skyrim, and 300 hours in New Vegas, so I think I can compare.

          11. No, I just meant “story-driven” games in general, where you have a plot which is used to unlock the game further. I know Skyrim isn’t a story-driven “RPG”, which is why I compared it to the Witcher 2 to illustrate the difference. I get your point regarding that the plot itself doesn’t drive the story forward, but there are some quests which are not available unless you progress further in the story. Otherwise you’d be stuck doing mostly fetch quests.

            I’ll have to play New Vegas sometime though. Heard it’s basically a post-apocayptic Skyrim. But I’ll be honest; if there are too many stats involved like in classic RPGs, I’ll have a hard time wrapping myself around that! I’m more of an action RPG guy with a focus on the action, I’ll concede that. But I can understand why Skyrim’s gameplay isn’t like classic role-playing in for example, say Diablo or Baldur’s Gate.

  6. I hope they do a bigger upgrade to that clunky old Gamebryo engine this time around instead of just making a few ‘tweaks’ to make it run better on consoles and then calling it Creation Engine 2.

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          2. Blurry, compressed textures that won’t stream properly using all your vram. ^^

            I hope they get cryengine and make it modable like fallout/skyrim

          3. Honestly? I have no idea. They just said that.

            I don’t know what’s the problem. Many companies already build their own engines. Only Zenimax is trying to use some prehistoric stuff to create their games. When was the last time you saw a beautiful game from Zenimax? That was probably Oblivion almost 8 years ago.

    2. Yeah, the Creation Engine had a ton of weird quirks and outdated code. I bet they could have stripped out or streamlined 80% of the game code if they had the time/ money.

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  9. I’d like it to be called Fallout 4, that name in question doesn’t sound like a whole new fallout game that it surely will be. I will be extremely excited whatever they will release, unless it’s a mobile game.

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    1. I hear you. Gamebryo is already very familiar to modders and easy to work with, BUT that doesn’t justify Bethesda and their reluctance to abandon it.

      With the amount of money they made from Skyrim and New Vegas, they could build several game engines and make them even more user-friendly, but I’m sure they will try to push that old tech again, and it is sad.

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      1. No but atlest if they say “we did it for you guys, so you wont lose the mods” it might end up better than other excuses they could make.

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  11. Various leakings over the past years suggested that the new Fallout will be in Boston and surrounding areas. The same way it was in Fallout 3 (Washington DC).

    Moreover, it was planned to release in 2015, so now it’s a perfect to announce it.

    Reply

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