Fallout 5 is on the docket, but it'll come after The Elder Scrolls VI

[Shawn Knight]

In brief: Bethesda Game Studios has a busy schedule lined up with Starfield, The Elder Scrolls VI and Fallout 5 all in the pipeline. AAA titles like these take time to get right, however, so don't expect to add the trio of games to your collection anytime soon.

In a recent interview with IGN, Todd Howard confirmed that the studio's next game will be The Elder Scrolls VI. This tidbit isn't exactly breaking news considering Bethesda first teased the game at E3 2018, but he did add that the project is already in pre-production and will be coming after Starfield.

Speaking of, Starfield was recently delayed along with Redfall into the first half of 2023 in order to give devs more time to polish the games.

Howard said Bethesda would be doing Fallout 5 after The Elder Scrolls VI. That's great news for franchise fans but there's little reason to get overly excited today.

The executive confirmed to IGN that work on Starfield started in late 2015. Assuming it ships in the first half of next year as planned, total development time will be somewhere in the seven year ballpark. Skyrim, which launched in 2011, took about five years to make from planning to finished product. Assuming similar development timelines, it could be well over a decade before Fallout 5 starts to materialize.

"They do take a while, 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," Howard said.

We got our first look at gameplay footage from Starfield earlier this week, and it is shaping up nicely. "Skyrim in space" is expected to be an Xbox / PC exclusive and could be the first real test to determine if Microsoft's $7.5 billion purchase of Bethesda was worth it.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/94956-fallout-5-docket-but-itll-come-after-elder.html

 

[FinancialExpert]

Fallout 3, thus far has been my favorite. It was my first Fallout game. I played it without understanding how to play it properly, learned how to play it, and played through it enjoying every minute. It was extremely engrossing. I literally playing it so long I was forgetting to eat. Day turned to night.

Fallout 4, was very good, but I have a huge problem with that game.
While most people criticize it for having shallower dialogue than Fallout 3 and less faction options than New Vegas, my problem was that the story path regarding The Institute was too difficult to understand.

#1 Finding the Railroad was too difficult.
#2 Building the teleporter was too difficult because most people, up until that time, didn't experiment with the settlement building - probably until they'd already finished the main story.

Having to build the teleporter without support could have been a game breaker for many.

I'm highly enthusiastic for Fallout 5 and I hope they eliminate the interface issues I had with 4.

 

[ConfiXs]

Fallout 3, thus far has been my favorite. It was my first Fallout game. I played it without understanding how to play it properly, learned how to play it, and played through it enjoying every minute. It was extremely engrossing. I literally playing it so long I was forgetting to eat. Day turned to night.

Fallout 4, was very good, but I have a huge problem with that game.
While most people criticize it for having shallower dialogue than Fallout 3 and less faction options than New Vegas, my problem was that the story path regarding The Institute was too difficult to understand.

#1 Finding the Railroad was too difficult.
#2 Building the teleporter was too difficult because most people, up until that time, didn't experiment with the settlement building - probably until they'd already finished the main story.

Having to build the teleporter without support could have been a game breaker for many.

I'm highly enthusiastic for Fallout 5 and I hope they eliminate the interface issues I had with 4.

imo the only thing I hope gets brought over from fallout 4 is weapon mods and base building, and even then it needs HEAVY reworks ie making walls flush with the ground, clearer wire placement so your outside walls dont look like spiderman built it ect also the perk system for fo4 was HORRIBLE it felt more like a shooter with very light perk mechanics than an rpg, I want perks to influence dialogue options or unlock the ability to use certain guns/armor, not add 20% extra damage that can be achieved by lowering difficulty

 

[Dimitriid]

I think the assumptions here while correct, are something Microsoft might want to do something about: 2015 to 2023 is close to an 8 year development cycle.

If we assume that's the best case scenario for Bethesda it means that Elder Scrolls VI began work maybe 2018 or so but likely 2019 or 2020 as it's quoted as 'Pre-production'

So it means that after the 2023 release of Starfield (If it doesn't slides into 2024 that is) it's likely we wouldn't have another major release from Bethesda until something like 2028 but more likely 2030. It means that Bethesda will take almost 20 years to produce another installment of Elder Scrolls.

Similarly assuming they can start doing some work on Fallout 5 by maybe a bit before Elder Scrolls VI is on the final stretch let's guess 2028 and if we take Bethesda's usual 8 years that means we wouldn't have Fallout 5 before 2036 so again, a full 21 years after the release of Fallout 4 you get another series entry.

Are you starting to see how spending over 7 Billion dollars on this company might not have been wise financial decision unless there's drastic changes? Trust me the games being praised here Skyrim or Fallout 4 were extremely buggy, underwhelming on the looks department at release and there's no reason to expect anything else from Bethesda.

Sure they're guaranteed to have at least some buzz regarding the franchises but do you really think fans of Skyrim will command record sales in the billions of dollars and millions of copies sold if you take 20 years in between releases? It's just absurd that a company is this slow and judging from previous titles very much highly incompetent.

Microsoft needs to just get rid of Todd Howard and most of the management team on Bethesda and give these franchises to somebody else otherwise it will make some money for them on an actual galactic frequency that has a lower frequency than a solar eclipse, just think about how much time we're talking about here: It just doesn't works, Todd.

 

[Aceseven]

I think the assumptions here while correct, are something Microsoft might want to do something about: 2015 to 2023 is close to an 8 year development cycle.

If we assume that's the best case scenario for Bethesda it means that Elder Scrolls VI began work maybe 2018 or so but likely 2019 or 2020 as it's quoted as 'Pre-production'

So it means that after the 2023 release of Starfield (If it doesn't slides into 2024 that is) it's likely we wouldn't have another major release from Bethesda until something like 2028 but more likely 2030. It means that Bethesda will take almost 20 years to produce another installment of Elder Scrolls.

Similarly assuming they can start doing some work on Fallout 5 by maybe a bit before Elder Scrolls VI is on the final stretch let's guess 2028 and if we take Bethesda's usual 8 years that means we wouldn't have Fallout 5 before 2036 so again, a full 21 years after the release of Fallout 4 you get another series entry.

Are you starting to see how spending over 7 Billion dollars on this company might not have been wise financial decision unless there's drastic changes? Trust me the games being praised here Skyrim or Fallout 4 were extremely buggy, underwhelming on the looks department at release and there's no reason to expect anything else from Bethesda.

Sure they're guaranteed to have at least some buzz regarding the franchises but do you really think fans of Skyrim will command record sales in the billions of dollars and millions of copies sold if you take 20 years in between releases? It's just absurd that a company is this slow and judging from previous titles very much highly incompetent.

Microsoft needs to just get rid of Todd Howard and most of the management team on Bethesda and give these franchises to somebody else otherwise it will make some money for them on an actual galactic frequency that has a lower frequency than a solar eclipse, just think about how much time we're talking about here: It just doesn't works, Todd.

so you'd like a rushed, shallow game instead of waiting a few yrs and playing some of the hundreds of other games that exist in the meantime?

Now I see why CoD does so well.

 

[bviktor]

Meh, give us an actual sequel to F2

 

[Dimitriid]

so you'd like a rushed, shallow game instead of waiting a few yrs and playing some of the hundreds of other games that exist in the meantime?

Now I see why CoD does so well.

This isn't a binary: The only options are definitively not "Either rushed rubbish or 2 decades of waiting time"

I submit to the opinion than beyond Bethesda's unquestionable incompetence, there's no good reason why they should spend most of their budget on new graphical engines and production values instead of just iterating on what I would call 'Good enough' graphics and making the gameplay the focus of the franchise.

Bethesda is a company that consistently does the opposite: No focus on coherent narrative elements or innovative gameplay but each game on the franchise being consistently more and more stripped down: Take a look at how many skills and stats you had for your character on Daggerfall or Morrowind vs Skyrim and Fallout games reducing everything to 'Perks' and randomly generated equipment tables and such.

If the game needs to take 8 years to develop I would expect it to compete with something like Witcher 3 in terms of what it should be, instead is about as much of an RPG as most of the generic Ubisoft open world sandboxes and those come out yearly.

Not sure why your conclusion was that I wanted worst games when my opinion is that Bethesda produces crap games and takes incredibly long at doing so for no good reason other than pop culture really liking vikings and making Skyrim popular as more of a meme and a mod vehicle than an actually decent game.

 

[Nobina]

It would be funny if before Fallout 5 the game we experience Fallout 5 IRL and Fallout 5 never comes out since the real Fallout happened.

 

[dangh]

I was huge fan of fallout 1 and 2, 3 was so so, Vegas was really fun but bit limited, 4... I couldn't enjoy it at all, never finished and don't even want to touch it. So... I don't think 5 will be any better. There is simply way to little to do and I'm comparing to f2, a really old game ... Way to many quests have really linear outcome, and illusion of choice us not very well hidden. I think games like divinity site there is still a potential in games with great story and mechanic, but companies wanting squeeze successful franchises will never have a 2nd look

 

[BSim500]

so you'd like a rushed, shallow game instead of waiting a few yrs and playing some of the hundreds of other games that exist in the meantime? Now I see why CoD does so well.

Arena = 1994
Daggerfall = 1996
Morrowind = 2002
Oblivion = 2006
Skyrim = 2011

Reality check - Elder Scrolls 6 was actually due out back in 2016-2017 and Elder Scrolls 7 would have been due 2022-2024. The only reason we don't have them is Bethesda has sat on its rear for a whole decade milking the sh*t out of ES5 to "Real Gamers" who've bought the same Legendary Special Anniversary VR game 3-4x in a row whilst complaining about lack of new games with zero sense of self-awareness...

Edit: And virtually all of Bethesda's games are rushed out unfinished anyway. I mean, modders are still patching up Daggerfall...

 

[Thatsdisgusting]

Why's everyone so nostalgic about F2? Gimme F1! - those barren, scorched and empty wastelands, just after the bombs, lonely, barely surviving settlements, numerous but outgunned and outnumbered raiders - and without those fancy NCR, legions, BoS and other "wasteland civilizations".

Or maybe action-FPS about Anchorage?....

 

[Uncle Al]

Once again the company neglects it's game playing public ..... and they wonder why so many people hate them??? Seriously???