So, E3 happened and, as expected, Fallout 4 dominated proceedings. In the course of two days, we learned more about Bethesda's post-apocalyptic RPG than we have in the course of several years of desperate hunting. Rumours were confirmed, gossip was waved away and, most excitingly, there were some real surprises in store, too.

The biggest of all, of course, was the release date. The game will be out in November, bucking the usual E3 trend of a first reveal coming years in advance. Apart from anything else, that means we got trailers, full feature rundowns and huge chunks of gameplay to watch from the get-go - here's everything we know so far.

Our Vault Dwellers have always been the strong, silent types, seemingly communicating all information via telepathy or morse code spelled out by gunshots. This time - whether you play as a male or female character - your character has a . It's apparently taken four years to write and record the 13,000 lines of dialogue required for each character, but producer Todd Howard wanted us to connect with our characters more, and this is the way to do it.

It helps that we'll be designing them to within an inch of their life, too. Far from the buttons and sliders of most RPG character creation sections, Fallout plonks your character in front of a bathroom mirror and lets you literally play with their face until you have it the way you want it. Design their spouse too and the game auto-generates a baby based on your creations. For its final trick, the voice of your Mr. Handy robot can cope with thousands of the world's most popular surnames, meaning you'll be referred to by name as you go. Immersion is the name of the game, seemingly.

This is the one main rumour that proved to be true - Fallout 4's Massachusetts setting is real if a little twisted. The big hitters are all there - there's a settlement inside Fenway Park, and the series has always made reference to M.I.T, now known only as The Institute - but this is an an alternate history, too. Real-life locations that have since been demolished still remain, like the old city centre, Scollay Square.

It's faithful enough that ex-Boston residents working on the game have said it made them homesick - but its the differences to previous games that has us interested. Fallout 4's Boston is significantly more built-up than the Capital Wasteland or New Vegas, with ramshackle skyscrapers and busy settlements popping up across the game trailers. Does that mean this game is set a fair bit later than either of the last two games?

"I'll be playing the game and run into something and be like, 'Who built this? What is this? It's so big!'" So says Todd Howard, a man supposedly overseeing the game. If he's not seen it all, what chance do we have? The focus clearly seems to be on building a world that offers up the kind of stories we can swap with friends, one of Bethesda's chief talents - and size is important in that respect.

We've not had any official word on exactly how big it is, but screenshots show off far more than simple urban wastes, and lead producer, Jeff Gardiner, summed it up by saying "I've played the game probably 400 hours, and I'm still finding stuff that I haven't seen yet." Get working on some thumb calluses - we're going for a virtual hike.

First up, you start the game pre-war. You know those old trailers for Fallout that showed the '50s techno-Americana bliss before the bombs dropped - you're living it. For a bit. Soon, you're running for the familiar environs of a vault (number 111 in this case) and a mushroom cloud signals the end of taht chapter.

I assumed that that meant you'd end up playing as the auto-generated baby mentioned earlier. Nope. As it turns out, your chosen character survives in their vault for 200 years. No one else does. Presumably, this will be the thrust of the storyline - working out just what Vault-Tec did to keep you from dying (or aging), while your spouse and child didn't make it. Fun!

That's not to say you'll be alone. The entire first trailer made it pretty clear that true series hero, Dogmeat, will be playing a major role. I'm guessing this is a different abandoned Alsatian to the one that glitched out and disappeared in my Fallout 3 save file (although in a game where someone can live for 200 years and come out of it a bit groggy, who knows) - it's certainly a more useful version.

Dogmeat can now take more advanced orders, attacking or distracting enemies, fetching items you can't be bothered to schlep over to and, most importantly, is totally invincible meaning I won't have to stop playing to have a bit of a cry at any point.

Fallout 3 ran on the Gamebryo engine. That was modified and re-released as the Creation engine for the release of Skyrim. Fallout 4, which has apparently been in development since 2009, runs on its own version of Creation. Bethesda, it seems, does not like change.

That's not to say that it'll feel like an old game. It's clear enough from the trailers that significant work has gone into the lighting and animation style, while the face-to-face, zombie-like conversations of old are out completely. Facial expressions are far more complex, and the conversation system is dynamic, not only letting you see the scene in third-person, but even break off to run away or attack your unsuspecting talking partner.

Fallout always did a (slightly) better job than its fantasy equivalents at using junk items in meaningful ways - and yes, the Rock-It Launcher returns, thankfully - but Bethesda's collection of inventory ephemera gains new purpose with the addition of a huge new crafting system.

Every weapon and armour set can be added to, altered and made to look significantly more badass with the application of a plethora of junk. How toy rockets are being used to create a sturdier rifle stock is never fully explained, but we'll be happy just to trade in a hundred broomsticks for some discernible reason, thank you very much.

Certain plots of land in the game can be used to create full settlements, from scratch. Think of it like the building system of a game like Rust, but with way> fewer penises. Build it, and wasteland inhabitants will come - the more you offer to passers-by, the more they'll want to set up shop (if they're rare items merchants, sometimes literally).

But the bigger you build, the more of a target you become. You'll need to set up defenses (including stringing powerlines around from generators) to, er, dissuade raiders from stealing your stff and killing your new citizens. But it's worth it - build more than one settlement and you can mogul it up by sending trade caravans between your towns.

Fallout's never taken itself too seriously - expect 4 to follow suit. Even without whatever the inevitable Wild Wasteland perk brings with it, we've already spotted the obligatory nuke launcher, rideable Vertibirds, airstrikes, jetpacks, and baseball bats with buzzsaw blades strapped to the end.

Best of all, your Pip-Boy's now an in-game console of its own - you'll be finding, let's say, familiar retro games to play on your green and black display. The original Donkey Kong featuring a Pipboy player-character, the slightly eerie inclusion of Missile Commander and more will be appearing.

The biggest surprise of all was that Fallout's incredible mod community will be getting a much bigger audience this time around. Todd Howard confirmed that Xbox One players will be able to download mods made for the PC version of the game first, with PS4 to follow suit later.

There's no word on exactly how this will be done - I'd guess at a pool of approved mods, but even without the truly outlandish stuff, that's a huge step towards keeping Fallout a going concern on console for years to come.

So, E3 happened and, as expected, Fallout 4 dominated proceedings. In the course of two days, we learned more about Bethesda's post-apocalyptic RPG than we have in the course of several years of desperate hunting. Rumours were confirmed, gossip was waved away and, most excitingly, there were some real surprises in store, too.

The biggest of all, of course, was the release date. The game will be out in November, bucking the usual E3 trend of a first reveal coming years in advance. Apart from anything else, that means we got trailers, full feature rundowns and huge chunks of gameplay to watch from the get-go - here's everything we know so far.

Our Vault Dwellers have always been the strong, silent types, seemingly communicating all information via telepathy or morse code spelled out by gunshots. This time - whether you play as a male or female character - your character has a . It's apparently taken four years to write and record the 13,000 lines of dialogue required for each character, but producer Todd Howard wanted us to connect with our characters more, and this is the way to do it.

It helps that we'll be designing them to within an inch of their life, too. Far from the buttons and sliders of most RPG character creation sections, Fallout plonks your character in front of a bathroom mirror and lets you literally play with their face until you have it the way you want it. Design their spouse too and the game auto-generates a baby based on your creations. For its final trick, the voice of your Mr. Handy robot can cope with thousands of the world's most popular surnames, meaning you'll be referred to by name as you go. Immersion is the name of the game, seemingly.

This is the one main rumour that proved to be true - Fallout 4's Massachusetts setting is real if a little twisted. The big hitters are all there - there's a settlement inside Fenway Park, and the series has always made reference to M.I.T, now known only as The Institute - but this is an an alternate history, too. Real-life locations that have since been demolished still remain, like the old city centre, Scollay Square.

It's faithful enough that ex-Boston residents working on the game have said it made them homesick - but its the differences to previous games that has us interested. Fallout 4's Boston is significantly more built-up than the Capital Wasteland or New Vegas, with ramshackle skyscrapers and busy settlements popping up across the game trailers. Does that mean this game is set a fair bit later than either of the last two games?

"I'll be playing the game and run into something and be like, 'Who built this? What is this? It's so big!'" So says Todd Howard, a man supposedly overseeing the game. If he's not seen it all, what chance do we have? The focus clearly seems to be on building a world that offers up the kind of stories we can swap with friends, one of Bethesda's chief talents - and in that respect.

We've not had any official word on exactly how big it is, but screenshots show off far more than simple urban wastes, and lead producer, Jeff Gardiner, summed it up by saying "I've played the game probably 400 hours, and I'm still finding stuff that I haven't seen yet." Get working on some thumb calluses - we're going for a virtual hike.

First up, you start the game pre-war. You know those old trailers for Fallout that showed the '50s techno-Americana bliss before the bombs dropped - you're living it. For a bit. Soon, you're running for the familiar environs of a vault (number 111 in this case) and a mushroom cloud signals the end of taht chapter.

I assumed that that meant you'd end up playing as the auto-generated baby mentioned earlier. Nope. As it turns out, your chosen character survives in their vault for 200 years. No one else does. Presumably, this will be the thrust of the storyline - working out just what Vault-Tec did to keep you from dying (or aging), while your spouse and child didn't make it. Fun!

That's not to say you'll be alone. The entire first trailer made it pretty clear that true series hero, Dogmeat, will be playing a major role. I'm guessing this is a different abandoned Alsatian to the one that glitched out and disappeared in my Fallout 3 save file (although in a game where someone can live for 200 years and come out of it a bit groggy, who knows) - it's certainly a more useful version.

Dogmeat can now take more advanced orders, attacking or distracting enemies, fetching items you can't be bothered to schlep over to and, most importantly, is totally invincible meaning I won't have to stop playing to have a bit of a cry at any point.

Fallout 3 ran on the Gamebryo engine. That was modified and re-released as the Creation engine for the release of Skyrim. Fallout 4, which has apparently been in development since 2009, runs on its own version of Creation. Bethesda, it seems, does not like change.

That's not to say that it'll feel like an old game. It's clear enough from the trailers that significant work has gone into the lighting and animation style, while the face-to-face, zombie-like conversations of old are out completely. Facial expressions are far more complex, and the conversation system is dynamic, not only letting you see the scene in third-person, but even break off to run away or attack your unsuspecting talking partner.

Fallout always did a (slightly) better job than its fantasy equivalents at using junk items in meaningful ways - and yes, the Rock-It Launcher returns, thankfully - but Bethesda's collection of inventory ephemera gains new purpose with the addition of a huge new crafting system.

Every weapon and armour set can be added to, altered and made to look significantly more badass with the application of a plethora of junk. How toy rockets are being used to create a sturdier rifle stock is never fully explained, but we'll be happy just to trade in a hundred broomsticks for some discernible reason, thank you very much.

Certain plots of land in the game can be used to create full settlements, from scratch. Think of it like the building system of a game like Rust, but with way> fewer penises. Build it, and wasteland inhabitants will come - the more you offer to passers-by, the more they'll want to set up shop (if they're rare items merchants, sometimes literally).

But the bigger you build, the more of a target you become. You'll need to set up defenses (including stringing powerlines around from generators) to, er, dissuade raiders from stealing your stff and killing your new citizens. But it's worth it - build more than one settlement and you can mogul it up by sending trade caravans between your towns.

Fallout's never taken itself too seriously - expect 4 to follow suit. Even without whatever the inevitable Wild Wasteland perk brings with it, we've already spotted the obligatory nuke launcher, rideable Vertibirds, airstrikes, jetpacks, and baseball bats with buzzsaw blades strapped to the end.

Best of all, your Pip-Boy's now an in-game console of its own - you'll be finding, let's say, familiar retro games to play on your green and black display. The original Donkey Kong featuring a Pipboy player-character, the slightly eerie inclusion of Missile Commander and more will be appearing.

The biggest surprise of all was that Fallout's incredible mod community will be getting a much bigger audience this time around. Todd Howard confirmed that Xbox One players will be able to download mods made for the PC version of the game first, with PS4 to follow suit later.

There's no word on exactly how this will be done - I'd guess at a pool of approved mods, but even without the truly outlandish stuff, that's a huge step towards keeping Fallout a going concern on console for years to come.