Bethesda has, at last, put its cards on the table. In a studio update published Friday and reported by Variety, studio director Todd Howard confirmed that Fallout 5 is in preproduction and that The Elder Scrolls 6 is the developer’s top priority. The note lands just after sweeping layoffs at parent company Xbox, and reads like a deliberate attempt to reassure fans that the two most-wanted role-playing games in the Bethesda catalogue are still very much alive.
Is Fallout 5 confirmed, and how far off is it?
Fallout 5 is now officially a real project, but Howard has been careful to frame it as a distant one. “Fallout 5 is currently in preproduction,” he wrote, describing it as the studio’s “long-range destination” while noting there are “multiple Fallout projects in active development right now.”
Preproduction is the earliest meaningful stage of a game’s life, so this is confirmation the game exists as a pipeline project rather than a promise you will be playing it any time soon. What it does end is years of speculation about whether the game was a serious plan or a one-page pitch gathering dust. It is real, it is happening, and it is a long way out.
One of those “multiple Fallout projects” is a collaboration with Obsidian Entertainment, the studio behind Fallout: New Vegas. Howard confirmed the two teams are “working with us on a new Fallout project,” with more to share later. That link had been reported previously, and Howard’s note now makes it official.
Why is The Elder Scrolls 6 the priority but still dateless?
The Elder Scrolls 6 is where most of Bethesda’s people are right now, which is why it sits ahead of Fallout 5 in the queue. “The Elder Scrolls VI is our primary development focus today, with the majority of our team currently working on the next chapter of the franchise,” Howard said.
He acknowledged the obvious tension — Skyrim has sold over 65 million copies and players are “still exploring” it 15 years later — while admitting “it’s been a very long wait for the sequel.” His reassurance was that “the next chapter is on the way. We’re where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day.” It is the kind of line Bethesda has offered before, most recently in an Xbox executive’s comments after visiting the studio, and it still stops short of the one thing fans actually want, which is a date.
Both games are being built on Creation Engine 3, a shared platform Bethesda has been developing since Starfield launched, designed to let its teams run multiple projects at once with new tools, rendering, and systems. It is the foundation for the next generation of Bethesda role-playing games.
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