Boston, they say, is the ruined locale for the next Fallout game. As with any substantial piece of news coming by way of the blogosphere, this should be taken with an iodine pill, but placing a new Fallout game in Beantown—the historical home to Sons of Liberty and the Minutemen—makes sense. It’s a popular setting recently with games like Assassin’s Creed 3 and The Last of Us. The city has a burgeoning development scene. And it has relevance, thematically.

The series’ social commentary doesn’t run very deep, with the extent of it being that a nuclear attack has occurred in a place very much associated with America, such as Washington, D.C. in Fallout 3. As Boston has been emblazoned in the national-security subconscious since the Boston Marathon Bombing, this could be a sign that Bethesda, the game’s purported developer, is interested in giving the series a makeover with contemporary issues. While the game’s retro-future post-World War grandeur contrasts nicely with the visions of ruination, a few things aside from the setting need to change. For example, with the emergence of narrative design, stories told through audio-files, the way Fallout is known for, have become old-fashioned, like ragtime. 

Also, nuclear weapons haven’t been a major threat since the end of the Reagan era. We’ll see if Fallout 4 in Boston can usher in a new kind of apocalypse. 

(img via prsaboston)