Once again, Bethesda fans and Fallout buffs were skunked, as the Game Awards 2014 event came and went, leaving behind no mention of Fallout 4 or anything else from Bethesda. The recent appearance of the 2014 Bethesda Christmas Card also offered precious little, by some reports, and the end result was a lot of unhappy gamers who are asking themselves one downright terrifying question: is Fallout 4 the next Half-Life 3?

To clarify, Half-Life 3 is a game that's been eagerly anticipated for some time, a follow-up to a very big game of its time, Half-Life 2. Gamers have been hungry for the further adventures of Gordon Freeman for some time, but there's been little word as to when this game will actually see the light of day, if ever. This parallels into Fallout 4, a game which has been hotly anticipated since 2011 came and the end of downloadable content for Fallout: New Vegas arrived.

The Bethesda 2014 Christmas Card failed to help matters, featuring Deathshead from Wolfenstein in a profoundly godawful Christmas sweater complete with kittens on the front, and the Keeper from The Evil Within. Essentially, there was nothing new revealed here, with characters from last year's games in play, and precious little revealed about the 2015 season.

Naturally, this has plenty wondering if, perhaps, there's a whole new crevasse about to open in the gaming world, one for Fallout 4. Well, reports have suggested that it is being developed, and given that this is the first installment of Fallout on a next-generation system—and let's face that fact right now; this pretty much has to be a next-generation release—it's going to take some time to get everything together. It's perfectly rational.

But then, we've got to remember what's coming up in 2015. There are plenty of big names that got delayed to 2015 for various reasons, and many of these are open-world titles like Mad Max, Dying Light, even Dead Island 2. That's a lot of content coming out, and for Fallout 4 to step into this might well fatigue even the biggest fan. But quite a bit of that delayed content is set to hit in early 2015, and that means a great potential for the biggest names to make a resurgence.

So is Fallout 4 the next Half-Life 3, a new Flying Dutchman of games whose release is watched for yet never arrives? No, I'd say that's not the case. There have been a lot of people watching for Fallout 4 news, and we're regularly hearing about it. It's not like Bethesda has all that many other properties to work with—Doom and Wolfenstein aside—so it's likely that something should be emerging before too much longer. The environment is somewhat different these days, admittedly, but with plenty of fans on its side and a rather slim development pool for other directions to go, it's a safe bet that Fallout 4 should be coming. Someday. Eventually.