The Institute is the nickname for the actual Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A ”may or may not be” MIT employee claims ”rumors are true” about the Boston setting. Bethesda is quiet.
It has been referenced before in Fallout about The Institute, with a small series of quests in Fallout 3 tasking the player with either helping to conceal or expose an android.
”The rumors are true, Fallout 4 will take place in Boston,” said Friend of the People on Reddit. ”In case you haven’t heard, Bethesda has recently been scoping out and researching Boston. They also have a strong connection to MIT. I may or may not be an MIT employee. But that’s really all I can say for fear of losing my job.”
They later added: “Apologies for the vagueness of this post. It’s not just my job that worries me, but also getting the f**k sued out of me. Bethesda’s contracts are basically full-proof so if they were to discover who I am, or rather, who I got this information from, a few people including myself could get into a lot of trouble.”
Another Reddit user added their two cents: ”I’ve been hearing reports from people in the Boston area, where my fellow Fallout-obsessed brother lives, that Bethesda has been in the Boston area doing initial research for Fallout 4. It’s highly speculative, but the main rumors surround Bethesda’s connection to “The Institute”, or what we call the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or M.I.T.
”M.I.T., although in populated Cambridge and just across the river from Boston proper, still has a small-town feel when it comes to the way news propagates through the community,” user ‘nMarauder’ continued. ”It is students and staff at M.I.T. that seem to be the ones talking the most about it, and they would be in a position to know. I wouldn’t be surprised, at all, if the rumors prove to be true in coming weeks.”
”Just thought I’d share! I’m not confirming anything, but all signs point to yes.”
Bethesda is yet to formally announce anything related to Fallout 4. It certainly represents an exciting prospect in not only setting but what tech advances we’ll get to see put to use in the new Fallout entry after Bethesda dramatically improved their game engine capabilities for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
Fallout 3 was derided by some as ‘ Oblivion with guns’, so, who’s up for ‘Skyrim with guns’? Check out the Reddit thread for more about this Fallout 4 in Boston rumour.
