Bethesda, it’s time to let someone else make Fallout 5

It’s been almost a decade since the last single-player Fallout game. 

It’ll probably be another decade until we get another one, from Bethesda at least.

After Fallout 4, Todd Howard’s team set a course for the stars, and the Fallout license was granted to a mix of Bethesda Game Studios and BGS Austin to develop Fallout 76.

While Fallout 76’s fortunes have improved greatly since its troubled launch, and there are plenty of players that will swear by its content all these years later, the lack of a proper single-player title, or even the faint notion that it’s something Bethesda will work on before 2028 is disappointing.

Of course, it’s not like Bethesda doesn’t have a lot on. Starfield was released last year, and an expansion is on the way. After that, The Elder Scrolls 6, which Bethesda bafflingly announced in 2018 when the game was little more than a title written on a whiteboard. There’s a sense that the massive fanbases that Bethesda has cultivated are both waiting in a queue.

“You’ve been waiting since 2015? Must be nice, we’ve been waiting since 11/11/11,” cries the deflated Elder Scrolls fan. Add to this the fact that the mechanics of developing a game have mutated in every direction.

An Elder Scrolls game built to the standards of a modern game is a decade-long effort. A Fallout game would be the same. Todd Howard is 54 years old. How many decade-long efforts does he have left?

This is not to denigrate Bethesda, or its style of game, even if some fans think the formula is getting long in the tooth. It’s more about that gut feeling of watching Amazon‘s new Fallout show and being desperate to explore a brand new word that you’ve not traipsed through 100 times. A game you don’t have to mod the beginning or ending of to feel fresh. Something that was developed this decade.

The answer is obvious. Let someone else make Fallout 5. And we both probably know who I’m thinking of.

Alexa, play Big Iron by Marty Robbins

I’m sure if you said that to the majority of the staff of Bethesda, they’d look back at you like you’d passed wind in their general direction, and I understand why. It’s one thing letting another team make a spin-off based on something you’re in charge of, but a fully-fledged sequel?

The not-so-secret best Fallout game wasn’t made by Bethesda. Fallout: New Vegas is a game that takes everything Fallout 3 promised it was before it came out and actually delivered on it. I love Fallout 3 dearly, but for all its promises about your actions mattering and shaping the world, it’s about as basic as it comes.

Oh, you decided to wipe a town from existence and murder dozens of people? When you eventually find your Dad and inform him of that, he’ll react like you’ve told him you forgot to take the bins out. It’s morality as understood by a child.

A new Fallout game from Obsidian, even if it wasn’t a sequel to New Vegas, would be an absolute Megaton for Microsoft. It ticks so many of the boxes that the company has been desperately trying to mark off over the last decade. It’s a huge franchise RPG, from a developer that delivers when it comes to critical acclaim.

Fallout is a sleeping giant of an IP, and it’s in Microsoft’s best interest to not just wait for Todd Howard to be ready.

I’m sure it’s aware of this. You’d struggle to miss the uptake in popularity of the whole Fallout franchise following the release of the warmly received Amazon adaptation. It’s easy to imagine Microsoft is frustrated that it didn’t have a full-priced game, or even just a new game to put into Game Pass, alongside it.

Sony catches a lot of flack for the way it has handled The Last of Us Part One and The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, but from a cold hard business perspective, these prestige pieces of TV clearly drive a huge amount of business.

Now that the series has been renewed for season 2, the calls within Microsoft to get something Fallout-shaped out the door have surely only increased.

The issue with the fantasy booking of Obsidian taking the reigns is, of course, the fact that Obsidian is already hard at work on two titles – Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 – the latter of which is often met with uncharitable “Fallout with the names filed off” accusations.

There’s also the question of whether Obsidian wants to do it. I understand that this, and much of the discourse around New Vegas 2, feels like fans just telling Obsidian to cancel what it cares about and get on with the games that ‘matter’, which can’t be nice.

My point is more that the world of Fallout is crying out for other stories to be told, other types of games, other developers to take to the stage. It’s honestly a testament to both the merchandising team at Bethesda and the love that the Fallout fans have for the game that you still see Fallout stuff absolutely everywhere, even before the TV show arrived.

The Vault Boy icon with his thumb up remains a genuinely iconic image in modern gaming, yet fans haven’t had a proper single-player release since Obama was president.

We will eventually get Fallout 5, but if Bethesda and Todd Howard are devoted to making it themselves, we simply can’t wait till 2035. Microsoft has incredible developers clogging up its kitchen drawers – give them a chance to tell their story with the incredible toybox that is the Fallout universe.

It’s a big wasteland out there. There’s room.