Bethesda Game Studios boss Todd Howard has stoked the Fallout 5 fires by saying the franchise is “the one we’re still doing the most work in above anything”.
His comments partially relate to online multiplayer game Fallout 76, which has been an ongoing project at the studio since its very wobbly release in 2018. Its existence means that while Bethesda hasn’t released a mainline single-player Fallout game since 4 in 2015, Bethesda has had a Fallout team working continually since then. But the team hasn’t solely been working on 76.
“I will say, first, looking at 76, we’ve never stopped developing Fallout. We’ve had a full team on Fallout for a long time. So, Fallout, as a franchise, is the one we’re still doing the most work in above anything,” Howard told Game Informer.
“Now, the majority of our internal studio is on Elder Scrolls 6. We are doing other things with Fallout that we haven’t announced, and you know, there’ll come a time for that. I get the sort of anxiety from fans, like, ‘Well, what else? What else? Feed me!’ But, look, we’re working on stuff, and we do like to wait. And so, I think there’ll be a moment to talk about that, and we want to make those special moments for our fans.”
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Bethesda has previously said Fallout 5 will be its next game after The Elder Scrolls 6, which was announced, coincidentally, the same year Fallout 76 came out, but which lay dormant while Starfield was made and released. Elder Scrolls 6 development is fully underway now, though, and some fans think TES6 could be released as soon as 2027, which I think is wishful thinking, but you never know. I suspect Howard and team will leave it later in Fallout 5’s development to properly announce the game; we could have another Fallout 4-like scenario where there are only several months between announcement and release.
It’s also important to note how much has changed at Bethesda Game Studios since it released Fallout 4. Fallout 76 – a multiplayer game – was a significant departure for the studio, and Starfield represented the studio’s most ambitious project yet as a completely new IP. Moreover, both games were not instant hits and required significant additional work after they came out. Such things change a studio, as studio director Angela Browder pointed out.
“I think every one of [our past games] is a learning experience, right? Let’s take Fallout 76 – yes, we learned how to make multiplayer; we also learned what it means when you ship a product that doesn’t necessarily hit really well right away,” Browder said. “And we learned about investing and listening to our players and strengthening who we are and what we are, our own ability to resiliency and adversity, all these kinds of things, right?
“We also learned what it means when you ship a product that doesn’t necessarily hit really well right away”
“When you talk about Starfield, we made the biggest thing we’ve ever done in our entire lives: we made space. I’m scared of space, I think space is really scary, but we made space! Everything that we learned by putting space into Starfield goes into Elder Scrolls 6. It’s all learning.
“We are better developers for having made a multiplayer game, we are better developers for having developed our own IP now, because it’s new muscles,” Browder added. “It’s tested us in a different way. It’s taught us a lot of things that we never could have known otherwise. And I do think even as we go into titles that are IP we’ve made before that we classically understand, we’re still better developers for having done it, because your brain thinks differently once you’ve done those kinds of things. And I think it’s only going to make every title we do better.”
Bethesda has collaborated on the Fallout TV series since then, too, of course, the first series of which aired last year, the second series of which began this month, and a third series of which has already been greenlit. And it’s very good – very faithful to the almost absurd nature of the games, which juxtaposes a kind of relentless upbeatness next to a ridiculously brutal and unforgiving world. Todd Howard has already said that Fallout 5 will take place in a timeline that acknowledges the TV series, set either after the events of it or during it.
There’s never been a better time for more Fallout, then. The question is simply when it will arrive. The sweepstakes are open – get your guesses in now.
