I’m going to be in my 30s by the time Fallout 5 comes out. For context, I was 15 when Fallout 4 launched in 2015. We still have Starfield to play later this year, before god-knows-how-long it’ll take to get The Elder Scrolls 6, and then finally, we’ll be back in the apocalyptic wasteland, chilling with Super Mutants and sipping Nuka-Cola by the radioactive ocean. I don’t even want to think about how long the wait for Fallout 6 will be. We could be in a nuclear wasteland of our own by that point. God help us.
Games take a long time to develop, and Bethesda doesn’t operate like most other studios. In the time between Skyrim and Starfield, FromSoftware will have launched the Dark Souls trilogy, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring, and Armored Core 6. That’s because it divvies up the workload. The only time Bethesda does that is with spin-offs, like The Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76. But damn it, I just want to shoot radroaches and charm the pants off some ghoul cultists while I try to purify some water.
The perfect solution to this slovenly wait is sitting right there under the Microsoft umbrella—Obsidian Entertainment. It was formed by ex-Black-Isle developers, otherwise known as the developers behind the original Baldur’s Gate games and Fallout 2. They know how to make a good RPG. And they showed that they can make the jump to 3D with The Outer Worlds and, more importantly, Fallout: New Vegas. The best Fallout. Sure, it’s subjective and everyone has their favourite, but it’s the best one. I don’t make the rules.
Obsidian has expressed interest in returning to the series with a sequel to New Vegas, but that’s thinking too small. Bethesda is busy with two gargantuan projects, and for decades, every game has upped the ante. We had a fleshed-out 3D world in Morrowind, organic interactions between NPCs that resulted in the meme goldmine of Oblivion, fully interactive settlement building and weapon customisation in Fallout 4, and now 1,000 planets in Starfield with complete space exploration across the galaxy. Exponential growth with each new game across myriad different franchises means ballooning development cycles. But it also means forgetting the intimacy that made its RPGs so enthralling in the first place.
Fallout 5 doesn’t need to be a 300-hour RPG with a world the size of America itself. It doesn’t need 200 blank slates for settlement building. It doesn’t need top-of-the-line, next-gen graphics. All it needs is a bunch of weirdos in a wasteland ready to talk your ear off, trying to convince you to join their side like they somehow know you’re the player character which comes with it the unstoppable power of plot armour. I’ll hear you out Caesar, sure. NCR head honcho? Yeah, I’ll pop by. Mr House? Ehhhh, I’d rather make my own luck. Elon Musk looking ass.
Fallout is at its best when you’re juggling the politics of each faction like a dam's about to burst. But Bethesda’s focus is on combat and more sandbox options at the expense of meaningful dialogue—just look at Fallout 4 with its wheel of bog-standard options ranging from sarcastic to nice guy. Whatever happened to evil? The real meat of a Fallout game is in its choices, the branching narratives you can forge and the skills you can unlock to alter the world around you. I’ll never forget taunting a guy at a war memorial over his dead brother to start a fight or waltzing into Mr House’s penthouse to find his old geriatric body lying in a pod before I opened it and left him begging for death.
Every playthrough can be unique in New Vegas, whereas with Fallout 4, an abundance of mechanics piled up and muddied the waters. Rather than telling your own story, you pick between a handful of clearly signposted endings. New Vegas had a few of its own, but everything you did in the world had a visible impact that would be highlighted at the end of your journey. These even had their own branching paths—you could crumble the Brotherhood of Steel or bring it back up to its prime, help the Super Mutants of Black Mountain or leave them be, join the King or leave him to the whims of the Legion… the list goes on. Often with several thought-out possibilities. In Fallout 4, it never felt organic and endings often went one of two ways.
Obsidian could bring the series back to its roots and not just for a spin-off, but for the next big entry. With how busy Bethesda is, it’d be remiss not to hand the reins over, otherwise, we’ll be waiting until the 2030s to play the next game. And if Fallout 4 is anything to go by, it probably won’t be worth the wait.