Summary
Fallout 5won’t start development until after The Elder Scrolls 6 launches, so we’re a long way off from the next numbered game in the series, but the Amazon show has igniteda newfound hype in the franchise. So, the question is whether a third party will develop a spin-off akin to Obsidian’sNew Vegasin the meantime.
As reported byVGC, Todd Howard claims that Bethesda has always been open to the idea, and that despite conspiracies from fans of him being upset at the popularity of New Vegas, he loves the game.
Xbox, who owns Bethesda as of 2021, is reportedlyplanning to release another Fallout “sooner rather than later”. Jez Corden of Windows Central added that he even thinks we’ll see a new game “this decade”, i.e. within the next six years.
“We’ve always had those conversations,” Howard said in an interview with Kinda Funny Games. “We did a lot of things for the show. It might seem like there isn’t a big new game out, but we added content to 76 for the show. 76 has a really great map expansion that’s coming this summer with Skyline Valley.
“They did an amazing job with New Vegas. I can’t speak to things that we’re doing with the franchise in the future, obviously, but New Vegas is a very, very important game to us and our fans. We think they did an incredible job.”
Who Could Develop A Fallout Spin-Off?
Microsoft now owns three studios with Fallout baked into their DNA. There’s Bethesda, which currently owns the rights; Obsidian, which not only developed New Vegas - based on ideas from the original Fallout 3, Van Buren - but was also founded by former Black Isle employees (the developer behind the original Fallouts); and inXile Entertainment, which was founded by Interplay co-founder Brian Fargo (also the developer behind the original Fallouts).
Obsidian and inXile both have Fallout spiritual successors and predecessors inThe Outer WorldsandWastelandrespectively. With all three studios now under the Xbox umbrella, perhaps we’ll see one take a crack at Fallout again. But Microsoft and Bethesda could throw a curveball and hand the IP to a completely different studio without any ties to the franchise. We’ll just have to wait and see.
However, it’s worth noting that New Vegas design director Josh Sawyer, who is still at Obsidian, would happily return to the series. “I love Fallout, I love the setting, I could see myself working in it again,” Sawyer told Kinda Funny Games last year. “People have talked about New Orleans. I do think California or the Midwest would also be very interesting.”
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.
