Updated: Fallout 4 release date, news and rumours ~ lotfi

Update: Bethesda has updated the Fallout website with a countdown and the message "Please Stand By".

The countdown ends on June 2 at 3pm BST/9am EST/6am PST, when we expect to get a full reveal of Fallout 4. We'll update this page with more info as it breaks.

Fallout 4

War... war never changes. And we never stop hoping that one day we'll set eyes on Fallout 4.

The open-world RPG franchise, set in a post-nuclear wasteland occupied by giant ants and the hits of the 1940s, has kept us coming back for more and more - but it's been five years since Bethesda's last entry in the series, Fallout: New Vegas. So what's the deal?

Considering the popularity of the series - not to mention the critical acclaim - it's highly likely that development on Fallout 4 has been taking place for some while, and it feels like we could be just a matter of days away from hearing something official.

Bethesda hasn't said whether or not Fallout 4 is happening, but here's what we do know...

When will we see it?

E3 2015. We'd put money on it. Probably quite a lot of money, in fact.

As soon as the invite to Bethesda's E3 press conference landed in our inbox, we knew it had to be Fallout. Skyrim is too recent, the team are still working on Elder Scrolls Online… it's time for something different, and we're not talking about another Brink. As this is Bethesda's first ever E3 press conference, it has to be for something big.

However, if the game is announced at E3 on June 14 we still doubt we'll see it launch this year. It's likely that Bethesda will choose to tease us with a trailer - possibly some demo footage if we're lucky - but don't expect to get your hands on it in 2015.

Fallout

What do we know about it?

The most recent hint comes from the Linkedin profile of a 3D artist which states that between December 2014 and March 2015 he was responsible for creating a "Fallout 4 cinematic trailer" for Mirada Studios.

Given that his previous work includes trailers for The Elder Scrolls, Far Cry 4 and Forca Motorsport, we can't help but wonder if someone, somewhere is getting a major telling off right now. In fact (quite hilariously) Mirada Studios contacted Destructoid and asked a story on the leak be removed, confirming that an NDA had indeed been broken. Oops.

Bethesda certainly likes to keep its cards close to its chest, but since the launch of Fallout New Vegas in 2010 there have a number "leaks" and rumours relating to Fallout 4, along with a few hints thrown in from Bethesda itself to keep us hungry.

In 2008, between the releases of Fallout 3 and New Vegas, Bethesda's Pete Hines suggested there was longevity in this franchise: "This is not something we're going to do once then go away and never do it again. When that will be or how long that will be God only knows, but we acquired it specifically because we wanted to own it and develop it and work on it like we do with The Elder Scrolls."

Fallout

In 2013, Bethesda Game Studios (the team behind Fallout 4 and Skyrim) announced that it had completed work on Skyrim content and was moving onto a new project that had been in pre-production. Also that year, Kotaku acquired and verified casting documents that revealed Fallout 4 would be set in Boston.

Codenamed 'Institute', the documents made no explicit reference to the Fallout name, but did refer to the setting and locations of the series. The script also started with the familiar introduction: "War. War never changes." Assuming these documents were real, we'd say that's pretty conclusive. The script also revealed a character named Preston Garvey who sends the player character to hunt down a fusion core from a museum in the Commonwealth.

However, if all of this is leading up to Fallout 4 at E3, we don't expect it will be playable this year. Two years isn't a long production time for a game of this amount of scale, which may be built on an entirely new engine. But a teaser and maybe a vague release date? We don't think we're asking for too much there.