Summary
TheFalloutseries has taken the world by nuclear storm. New and old fans alike areflocking back to the games en masseas they itch for more from its world. But aside from a second season, there’s nothing on the horizon to look forward to.
There was an eight-year gap between Fallout 4 andStarfield, and there’ll likely be a similar wait between Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6 and then again between TES 6 and Fallout 5. At worst, that means the next mainline Fallout game could be 15 years away from launching on top of the nine years we’ve already waited. If development cycles somehow shorten (despite ballooning everywhere else in the industry), even another ten years feels optimistic.
Fallout 4 came out when I was 15. At this rate, I’ll be in my late 30s, early 40s when Fallout 5 comes out.
The show might even befinishedby the time Fallout 5 is out, with several seasons under its belt. And yet that same show is bringing in a hungry community desperate for more. None of it makes sense, and it marks a serious problem with Bethesda’s strategy and the unquenchable thirst to make every single new game bigger than the last.
Starfield’s vast, expansive galaxy was the most empty Bethesda map to date, as the rush to make everything bigger left no room for the tight-knit worlds packed with detail that made its past RPGs such a treat to explore in the first place.
That’s whyNew Vegasdeveloped such a fervent fanbase. Not only was its ‘wasteland’ stuffed with interesting and witty characters ready to set us on equally exciting quests, but its intricate politics and branching questlines all made it feel as though you had an impact on the world which you could see in real-time as you explored it. Starfield on the other hand feels like a slog through endless menus to tick checkboxes in an uninteresting sandbox that has nothing of value to say.
The drive to make every single sequel larger than the last means longer development cycles and shallower games, and it’s pushed Fallout 5 so far back that Bethesda can’t hope to tap into the fever the show has unleashed… Unless it shelves The Elder Scrolls 6.
It’ll never happen,Bethesda said as much. Skyrim is one of the most successful games of all time and everyone’s itching for the sequel, but Elder Scrolls hasn’t laid nearly as dormant as Fallout between games.
Every year, we get a new Elder Scrolls story inESO, and they’re often as good, if not better than the main quests of the main games anyway. The last expansion even introduced a secret Daedric Prince who had been buried from history - ZeniMax Online is taking confident swings with the lore and opening up Tamriel like never before. TES fans just need to take the leap and they’ll quickly find the wait for TES6 to be a lot more bearable.
Fallout, on the other hand, is as dry as the Mojave. Aside from the show, the only thing waiting for fans is the multiplayer survival sandbox 76. And while the game has come a long way since its infamously rocky launch, it doesn’t hold a candle to how organic the worlds of the main games are. But because of how Bethesda operates, it will be at least a decade before we have an alternative.
If Not Fallout 5, Then What?
Aside from changing priorities, there are other ways to remedy the problem. As our Editor-in-Chief Stacey Henley wrote, Bethesda could work on asmaller Fallout, drastically reducing the scope to get a new game out the door within the next few years. Another option is to share the rights. Bethesda is now owned by Microsoft, who also owns Obsidian, AKA the developer of Fallout: New Vegas and the successor to the studio that developed the original two games. It’s as fit for the job as Bethesda.
We could see a game built on the back of 4, especially withits current-gen update out soon, much as New Vegas was built on 3. This would allow for a quicker turnaround than a full reinvention in the vein of Starfield and TES6, and it would mean returning to the West Coast where the show is set - perfect timing.
Of course, Obsidian is busy with a slew of its own projects likeAvowedandThe Outer Worlds 2, so even that looks unlikely. Another avenue would be to license the IP to someone completely new, likeUbisoft and Dead Cells developer Motion Twin’s partnership for Rogue Prince of Persia.
Fallout didn’t start with Bethesda, and some of the best stories in the series come from other developers, so giving a new team a chance to take a crack at the world would invite a fresh perspective and open the doors to getting a game on shelves far sooner than Bethesda itself can.
Whatever the case, the way things are going, Bethesda will completely miss the train and squander the perfect opportunity to leap at the newfound success the series is basking in. Hell, by the time Fallout 5 is here, maybe we’ll all be ghouls anyway.
Fallout
Fallout is a franchise built around a series of RPGs set in a post-nuclear world, in which great vaults have been built to shelter parts of humankind. There are six main games, various spin-offs, tabletop games, and a TV series from Amazon Studios.
