The report, generated by a Reddit post from a user that says they can't say much more about it than this lest they lose their job, says that Bethesda has been out scouting the Boston area, and has some strong ties in at MIT. Obviously, this is still early-stage stuff and needs to be taken with the appropriate grain of salt, but there is some justification for such a rumor in the storyline already.
Those who have played Fallout 3 recently likely remember vague tales of the Institute, an organization within the Commonwealth, said to be a kind of revived nation-state encompassing a large swath of New England. For the most part, not much is known about the Commonwealth or the Institute, except for three critical points:
1. The Institute is capable of producing androids that pass for human so well even the androids themselves may not know they're Androids.
2. The Commonwealth is now, canonically, home to Madison Li, one of the progenitors of Project Purity, as she just left to be up there following the events of Fallout 3.
3. The Institute is also home to an organization known as the Railroad, attempting to get the shockingly human androids out of their bondage to the Institute.
Given those three points, it's safe to say that there's enough in that for at least a mission in the game, if not necessarily an entire game itself. Considering the popularity of Old World Blues from Fallout: New Vegas, however, that makes this rumor a whole lot more plausible than previous incarnations. Better yet, one of the Institute's staffers, Zimmer, described the Commonwealth in Fallout 3 as "a war-ravaged quagmire of violence and despair", which sounds exactly like the setup for a perfectly valid Fallout installment.
Naturally, there's no way to tell whether or not this will ultimately prove to be the case until the game itself. Many are betting on this one to be a "next-gen" release, meaning that it won't actually make an appearance until the Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4 make their appearances, currently expected sometime around 2014. While I was personally hoping for Chicago--we've done east and west, let's get the midwest in on the game for once--or something similar, Boston sounds like it could be fun, especially given the number of loose ends from Fallout 3 left to be resolved. Either way, it's something worth keeping an eye on for future developments.
