Believe it or not, Bethesda Softworks had already decided Fallout 4 would be set in Boston at a very early stage. How early? Before the launch of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim even released in 2011.
Bethesda marketing VP told Pete Hines told GameSpot that, “Pre-Skyrim…The ideas for Fallout 4 started right after Fallout 3 and have gotten worked on and been percolated since 2008…We’re talking about its infancy, we’re talking about jotting some stuff down, we’re talking about, ‘I want to do it in Massachusetts, and have it be about this, this, and this.'”
Of course, full scale production began years after the release of Skyrim, which we would guess is around the time all the DLCs had released. “The point at which it really kicked into development whenever it was when we put up the post that said, ‘Hey, we’re done with Skyrim and moving onto the next project.’
“Once we were done with all of that, it was like, ‘Alright, now it’s Fallout 4 full-throttle.”
Fallout 4 releases on November 10th for PS4, Xbox One and PC.