One of the biggest game legends of the past few years is that of Bethesda's Fallout 4. Following a Fallout alternate reality game, a Fallout 4 teaser website, and a mass Fallout 4 sign-up email, all of which turned out to be hoaxes, Fallout fans are impatiently clamoring for some real news on the retro-futuristic post-apocalyptic RPG.

In fact, a petition was started a little over a year ago asking Bethesda's PR department to just go ahead and announce Fallout 4 once and for all. "We do not ask for much; just throw us a bone, tell us you are working on it," the petition's creator, Silviu Ploisteanu writes. "If you're thinking the same way that I do, please SIGN this petition. You can make a difference! It's up to you if we wait another five years to get some news OR we get Bethesda's attention on this subject now. You can raise awareness by sharing this with your Facebook friends, by posting it on your wall, anywhere you can think of really. The more we are, the more attention we will draw."

But it's going to take much more than a petition with 12,430 signatures to get Bethesda to announce a game if they're not ready to announce it. Alas, there is hope! At this summer's E3 conference in June, we know that Bethesda will be holding a stand-alone press conference to announce something big. Sure, it could be related to one of the game company's other successful franchises like Elder Scrolls, Doom, or BattleCry, but we're ultimately holding out hope for something related to Fallout 4.

Bagogames speculates on what could be announced at the important Bethesda meeting, stating that if the game is announced, their collective hands will "raise to the heavens." The general consensus among many experts is that Doom 4 will be the only "4" we'll see from Bethesda at E3, though.

IGN took a gander at what this big press conference could mean, and as podcaster Mitch Dyer points out, "You don't really say you're holding a press conference if you don't have anything to talk about." The general consensus among the IGN guys is that yes, Fallout 4 will most likely be the big announcement.

But that brings us to a possible release date. Fallout 3 was the first iteration of the series that was handled by Bethesda, and that was released on October 28, 2008. Fallout: New Vegas is a sequel-ish follow-up that was also released in October (of 2010), so does this mean that we may be seeing Fallout 4 in October of 2015?

That's not so likely, as Bethesda likes to announce games way before they actually release. Fallout 3 was announced in July of 2004 and Fallout: New Vegas was announced in April of 2009. For this reason, I'm predicting Fallout 4 will be announced at E3 to release in October of 2016.