Bethesda won’t rush Fallout 5, Todd Howard says

Bethesda has no plans to “rush” out a new Fallout game to capitalise on the franchise’s current popularity.

That’s according to game director Todd Howard, who told YouTube channel MrMattyPlays “Fallout’s never been more popular” than it is following April’s release of Amazon’s TV show, which has helped drive a massive increase in game sales.

Nevertheless, Howard said Bethesda’s willing to take its time with the next mainline Fallout game in order to “get it right”.

“For other Fallout games in the future, obviously I can’t talk about those right now, but I would say sort of rushing through them, or we need to get stuff out that is different than the work we’re doing in Fallout 76, we don’t feel like we need to rush any of that,” he said.

“Right now, the Fallout TV show fills a certain niche in terms of the franchise and storytelling. I totally get the desire for a new mainline single player game and look, those things take time. I don’t think it’s bad for people to miss things as well.

“We just want to get it right and make sure that everything we’re doing in a franchise, whether it’s Elder Scrolls or Fallout or now Starfield, that those become meaningful moments for everybody who loves these franchises as much as we do.”

Having released Starfield last year, Bethesda Game Studios has switched its attention to The Elder Scrolls 6, meaning a sequel to 2015’s Fallout 4 is likely many years away from releasing.

Howard recently said Bethesda was working on solutions to shorten the length of time between its game releases, and that it hasn’t ruled out partnering with external developers on future games.

“Obviously I can’t talk about the stuff we’re working on in this moment,” Howard told MrMattyPlays. “I’d like to hold this stuff back as long as possible, and you know, my perfect scenario for games are to announce them and get them out as quickly as possible.”

He also said there are no current plans to modernise Fallout 1 and 2, or to bring them to consoles.