Following the success of the show based on the property, the Fallout series has been riding a wave of renewed interest. The video game industry often sees a developer or publisher striking while the iron is hot, so you may be wondering if Fallout 5 is around the corner. I’ve got bad news for you.
As of right now, Fallout 5 has not been revealed and has only been spoken of in brief.
It is, as far as we know, still in pre-production.
To disappoint you further, based on my observations of Bethesda and their current development position, it is unlikely we will see Fallout 5 from them any time soon. It exists, but the developer seems to have other priorities.
What do we know about Fallout 5?
We don’t know much about Fallout 5. Or, really, anything at all aside from its existence. We knew as far back as late-2021 that preliminary work was being done on the title. More recently, Todd Howard said that he worked with the creators of the Amazon Prime show to avoid conflicts with the story planned for Fallout 5. He told Den of Geeks, “Well, there were some things where I said, ‘Don’t do this because we are going to do that in Fallout 5.’”
However, the only thing that has been alluded to is groundwork planning. Nothing has been revealed, so no one outside of Bethesda can say with certainty how much development has gone into the game. While it’s likely to run on Starfield’s Creation Engine 2, that in itself hasn’t been confirmed.
And it could be a very long time before we actually hear anything. Currently, Bethesda is working on The Elder Scrolls VI, and while we’ve seen a teaser for that game, it didn’t really start production until the completion of Starfield last year. At that point, Peter Hines stated that it could be years before we see Skyrim’s successor. And if that game is still far out, then it will be years plus years before we can play Fallout 5.
There is some potential that Fallout 5 or an interim sequel could be handed off to another studio, such as Obsidian, but that would probably also mean years of waiting. There is no groundwork for another studio to build off of. They’d presumably have to build from the ground up without causing needless overlap with what Bethesda has planned.
That leaves the possibility of a spin-off title, like, say, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. That’s perhaps more likely, but if something like that is in the works, it has not been confirmed or even hinted at.
When will Fallout 5 be released?
There is no release date for Fallout 5 because, as far as we know, the game only exists in the conceptual stage. It’s reportedly in pre-production and isn’t expected to go into full production until after the release of The Elder Scroll VI. That game isn’t planned for release until years from now. So, if things go as planned, we won’t see Fallout 5 for many, many years.
