Fallout 5 is happening, but not until after The Elder Scrolls 6

By George Yang Published June 14, 2022

Bethesda’s Todd Howard confirmed that Fallout 5 will be the studio’s next project after The Elder Scrolls 6.

In an interview with IGN, Howard said, “Yes, Elder Scrolls 6 is in preproduction and, you know, we’re going to be doing Fallout 5 after that, so our slate’s pretty full going forward for a while. We have some other projects that we look at from time to time as well.”

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It’s going to be a while until we see The Elder Scrolls 6, and even longer for Fallout 5. The Elder Scrolls 6 was first teased all the way back during E3 2018 and still doesn’t have a release window. Bethesda’s currently busy working on Starfield and so its focus will be on that until it releases in 2023.

Howard previously mentioned that he does have a one-pager for Fallout 5, as well as what he’d like to do with the game, but nothing is set in stone quite yet.

Starfield was originally supposed to come out on November 11, 2022, but was delayed to 2023. This leaves an enormous hole within Microsoft’s exclusive content portfolio for this year, but does set up the platform for a monstrous 2023.

While The Elder Scrolls 6 was officially announced four years ago, the platforms it would be on weren’t confirmed yet, giving Microsoft wiggle room to claim it as an exclusive for Xbox and PC since it now owns Bethesda. With Starfield being exclusive to Microsoft and The Elder Scrolls 6 likely being as well, Fallout 5 will most surely be too.

The most recent games in the Fallout series were 2018’s Fallout 76 and 2016’s Fallout 4. In the time between now and Fallout 5, maybe we can hope for a sequel to Fallout: New Vegas.

George Yang is a freelance games writer for Digital Trends. He has written for places such as IGN, GameSpot, The Washington…

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