Paraphrasing John Boorman's post apocalypse:
"A new trailer."
"An end to forum semi-retirement."
(raised Webley) "REVENGE."
The trailer is well made, and gets the lizard brain interested in what the next Beth outing has in store. Then you stop to think about it...
Perlman:
I wonder if what we hear: "My god.The soldiers were right. War. War never changes." is said all together in the game.
If so, the first part seems like a more defined narrator persona than we've had before. The evident emotion contrasts with the dry history-teacher description from FO1 (and FOT, FO3, and FONV), as well as the metaphor-laden tribal description of FO2. But maybe Perlman voices an in-game character, distinct from the narrator, and the trailer-makers just pieced it together.
If Perlman voices an in-game character and that character is also the game's narrator, that's a mess. It would imply that all the games are narrated by the same character. That could be as bad as a fully-voiced protagonist. Which I have grave doubts about.
Imagine if Butch Harris had narrated FO1. "War, war never changes, war is money, change is not money." See how that sucks?
Seeing the War:
I have mixed feelings about this. It's very effective as a trailer, and kind of visceral, probably enhanced by the pseudo first person (first canine?) perspective. But a big part of the genius in the FO1 setting was the interplay between the dark humor, pre-war naive optimism, and (largely implied?) seriousness of the war. Actually seeing well rendered people running for shelter and being hit by the bomb's blast wave might make it harder for Beth to get the humor right. And they haven't managed that well at all so far. The Van Buren intro tutorial was not problematic, probably because of the iso view, and because it was suffused with the right sense of humor and slightly over-the-top "communist insurgents".
Vertibirds or something like them:
Someone already suggested what we see could be a prototype, variant, or even a similar craft made by another company. It is possible that we are only seeing one machine, flying over the suburban street right at the start of the war, then preserved, repaired, and eventually seen again in the events of the game. Work on advanced aircraft projects would not be too far outside the portfolio of the
MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
Intact Buildings:
Those large buildings still standing are problematic. The explanation why New Vegas wasn't ruined was sort of believable, and maybe DC was defended somehow, but there's only so many times you can let that happen to a large urban area in the Fallout setting. A few buildings intact, part of a suburb still standing here and there, and small towns that went untouched are one thing. Mr House claims that Las Vegas and it's surroundings were targeted with 77 warheads. The Boston metro area is far larger, both in area and population, and I'm sure has more important manufacturing, scientific, and government targets than Vegas ever will. Boston would also have older buildings that would require more blast pressure to destroy, so weapon coverage would have to be quite dense. The only way a tall structure would be likely to survive even moderate blast pressure (15 psi) from a single bomb is if all the exterior cladding (glass, marble, or in the 50s some of those swell "Transite" asbestos panels) shattered or broke away, leaving a bare steel or concrete skeleton with minimal wind resistance. Anything with wall covering still attached is subject to drag forces as the blastwave goes by.
The Timeline and Geography
I can understand having more organized societies over time, and that is an interesting aspect of the post-apoc setting. Gradually larger bodies of people form up, and there is conflict or cooperation. It seems like Beth is committed to new games progressing chronologically, with the natural trend tending toward larger groups, and a gradual "closing of the frontier".
How ironic that the newer games focus on areas that are a mere postage stamp on the map, compared to FO1 and 2, with their sparsely settled lands extending hundreds of miles. New Vegas managed this very well, being constrained to a small area, but connecting people and events with the outside world, to large organizations, each with vast off-map territories and diverse agendas. FO3 had a little bit of larger groups, mainly BOS and Enclave, but they were largely isolated from the larger world, and had agendas mostly contained in the poor vessel of the unconvingly named "Capital Wasteland".
I guess on the plus side, we could eventually get FO games that jumped back in time, with proper large world maps, to explore other places. Places where a simple vault dweller or tribal could truly make their mark on the world.
A related gripe is the sort of unhinged Beth approach to the passage of time. The abandoned Vaults in FO3 all had backstory elements about how they failed, but they mostly felt like they had met their end recently, maybe because some had rag-assed survivors hanging around. But by 200 years after the war, most Vaults should have opened long ago. The 2277-and-after games should logically move us away from having Vault Dweller protagonists (even Vault Dweller characters for the most part). But then how do the Vaults, in whatever condition they are in, continue to be relevant to the games?
Life without the Vaults, is a big change.