When speaking to IGN earlier this week, Bethesda Game Studios director and producer Todd Howard confirmed what many fans already assumed: Fallout 5, the next chapter in the famed franchise, is Bethesda’s next planned mainline project after Elder Scrolls VI.
Currently, Bethesda is developing Starfield, their first new IP outside of Elder Scrolls and Fallout in more than 20 years. Starfield is slated for a release in the first half of 2023 after being delayed from November 2022. After that, the developers will continue to work on Elder Scrolls VI. The last Elder Scrolls title was Skyrim, which was released in 2011.
There is currently no release timeline for Elder Scrolls VI, let alone Fallout 5. Still, this is the first time that Howard or anyone from Bethesda have gone on the record about the developer’s post-Elder Scrolls VI plans.
“Yes, Elder Scrolls VI is in pre-production and, you know, we’re going to be doing Fallout 5 after that, so our slate’s pretty full going forward for a while,” Howard told IGN. “We have some other projects that we look at from time to time as well.”
Pre-production still means that concrete development on Elder Scrolls VI has really yet to begin. Bethesda has said in the past that it wanted to work on Starfield before Elder Scrolls VI. The developer began work on Starfield in 2015, meaning that it will have been close to eight years before the space RPG is released.
Elder Scrolls VI will likely take the same amount of time, which puts Fallout 5’s release date likely toward the late 2020s to early 2030s. Howard resonated with fans about the long wait times in between their games, saying “I wish they came out faster, I really do. We’re trying as hard as we can, but we want them to be as best as they can be for everybody.”
The last Fallout title to release was Fallout 76, a spin-off title that was criticized heavily upon its release. However, since then, it’s made great strides to improve and is now a decent Fallout game for both newcomers and veterans. The last main series Fallout game to release was Fallout 4 in 2015.
