Fallout 4 announcement in five days?

Fallout developer Bethesda Software recently trademarked Fallout 4 with the Office for the Harmonization of the Internal Market for the European Union, sparking new rumours that the developer is planning an announcement about their next chapter in the Fallout universe.

Prior to the trademark being captured, a teaser website, thesurvivor2299.com, was spotted by Reddit users and the site hosts a countdown timer that ends in approximately fifteen days and nine hours, along with Morse code streaming in the background.

The teaser site has been recently updated, however, and now hosts a second timer with the words, “Nuclear winter is coming in 5 days.” The second timer ends on the morning of 1 December 2013, six days ahead of the Spike VGX 2013 game awards.

Fallout 4 teaser countdown

When the site was discovered, Reddit users eventually identified the site owner as a Polish-based web designer who appears to have no links to Bethesda Software. Since the discovery several changes have been made to the site, including shutting down any ways to remotely log into the server hosting it, as well as the hosting server being changed to a location inside the US.

The Morse code was soon translated into a ciphered message. The message was later decoded to read, “My dear sister. I’m heading to The Institute. God knows what happened to this place now. This old bastard will help us. He must help us. 0321.”

The Institute is a location inside the Fallout universe, the former Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which itself lies within The Commonwealth, a barren landscape harsher than the wastelands in previous games. A group of scientists and engineers began to gather up after the war to continue their experiments and create new technology to help humanity in the aftermath. The Institute is credited for creating intelligent A.I., android and synths that were introduced to players in Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

In Fallout 3, players met three people from The Institute in the “The Replicated Man” sidequest – Dr. Zimmer, his bodyguard Armitage, and Zimmer’s creation, Harkness, an android with the memories of a human that was once alive. Another character who players met was Victoria Watts, who took it upon herself to smuggle androids from their masters and set them free.

If the new leaks from the teaser site are true, it’s possible that Fallout 4 will set players in the role of a scientist working inside The Institute who is led to rebel against The Commonwealth. At least we only have to wait another five days to see if any of it is true.