‘Fallout 5’ is alive, but likely years away

Bethesda has a one-pager for 'Fallout 5' - but don’t get too excited yet.

Todd Howard’s been thinking about Fallout 5.

As do we all, from time to time. But when the director and exec producer of Bethesda Game Studios ponders the post-apocalyptic RPG series, it sets things in motion. 

Howard and his team already have a creative concept already for the next Fallout game: “We have a one-pager on Fallout 5, what we want to do”, he told IGN. 

It’s probably too early to start packing our bags and boarding the hype train though.

“I’d like to find a way to accelerate what we do,” he said, referencing the long gaps between Elder Scrolls and Fallout releases, “but I really can’t say today or commit to anything that’s gonna happen [or] when, other than ‘Hey, our cadence is Starfield and then Elder Scrolls 6.”

Starfield, a spacefaring new IP from the studio, has a pretty firm release date now so we should all be playing it on Nov. 11, 2022. 

Their next game on the slate is Elder Scrolls 6, which was officially announced at E3 2018 while in pre-production and not yet in a playable state. 

So it sounds like we’ve got some time on our hands before Fallout 5 drops.

One possible avenue to accelerate what they do, as Howard put it, would be to hand development over to another team within the Bethesda fold. Obsidian Entertainment was entrusted with Fallout: New Vegas, for example, which won an enduring cult status for its hardcore tabletop style ruleset.

BGS has several studio locations whose responsibilities overlap. We’re interpolating here, of course, but it sounds like it’s at least within the company’s resources to hand IPs off to different locations and develop them simultaneously. 

“Fallout’s really part of our DNA here. We’ve worked with other people from time to time, I can’t say what’s gonna happen” said Howard. 

On the wider BGS operation, he added: “I like to view it as one big team, and then we have groups that focus on one game.”

“So you could look at the Fallout 76 team, mostly based in Austin right now, and that’s a full team that you would put on a game but they work on other things. And a lot of people here in Rockville worked on 76 and Montreal and Dallas as well. 

We’ve always done it that way so we can move between projects so everybody knows they’re gonna work on Elder Scrolls 6 in some fashion.” 

Written by Phil Iwaniuk on behalf of GLHF.