Fallout 4 Trademark Filing Prompts Speculation

Despite the fact that an enormous number of players are literally hundreds of hours deep into Skyrim, Bethesda finished working on its most recent open-world extravaganza back in April of this year. The company didn't tell anyone what it was up to next, however.

It's looking increasingly likely that the next title we'll see from the studio will be a new installment in the post-apocalyptic role-playing series Fallout, since series fan site The Vault discovered a filing with European trademarking body the Office of Harmonization for the Interal Market, or OHIM for short. Speculation is rife, with by far the most popular theory being that Bethesda will reveal Fallout 4 at the upcoming VGX show, formerly the Spike Video Game Awards, set to take place on December 7.

There's also the mysterious The Survivor 2299 site to consider, which some believe contains Fallout references. The site features a countdown to December 11 of this year, a date reiterated in the morse code that loops on the site. The jury's out on whether or not the site is genuinely from Bethesda -- Reddit and NeoGAF are investigating -- but there's evidence both for and against at present.

The idea of Bethesda perhaps alternating new Elder Scrolls and Fallout games isn't altogether implausible as more and more big developers and publishers start annualizing franchises, but it remains to be seen if these clues actually come to anything, or whether they're little more than a prank played by someone with nothing better to do. It could go either way right now.

What would you like to see from a new Fallout game, assuming it exists?