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Todd Howard decided to finally land fans of the post-apocalypse by rolling out fresh details about the fate of Fallout 5. The creative director of Bethesda bluntly stated that the studio has now thrown all the best resources into fine-tuning The Elder Scrolls VI, so the announcement of the new part of the “nuclear” franchise has been pushed into a very long box.

In fact, work on the Wasteland world has not completely stopped — the team continues to cut content for Fallout 76 and some secret projects. However, full-fledged production of Fallout 5 will start only when The Elder Scrolls VI is released, because Bethesda seems to want to make the moment of return to Fallout truly legendary. To be honest, insider forecasts are not encouraging at all: we will see TES VI no earlier than 2027-2028, which means that a fifth of Fallout will reach release rails only by 2030.

By the way, The Elder Scrolls VI is now the top priority of Bethesda Game Studios after the release of Starfield and is under active development. In addition, it is worth considering that the second season of the series “Fallout”, released in December 2025, is officially embedded in the general canon of the game universe. As a result, it turns out that the franchise lives off TV shows and online, while the main single-player game is stuck in deep pre-production due to the ambitions of the Ancient Scrolls.

Expert verdict: Is it worth waiting for Fallout 5 before Elder Scrolls VI?

Bethesda, to be honest, has been following an ironclad rule for ages: the studio only releases one flagship AAA project for one player at a time, and everything else is just that, support is afloat. Starfield, by the way, held this throne until the very release, and now the whole team has smoothly crawled over to forge The Elder Scrolls VI, not Fallout 5 at all. This means that even if some drafts or early ideas for the continuation of the “nuclear” series are gathering dust in the company’s bins, the main production capacity of Bethesda Game Studios is packed for the needs of TES VI for years to come.

How does Bethesda build development cycles?

Historically, large-scale RPGs from this publisher are rolled out with long breaks, and each new brainchild consumes from 4 to 5 years of clean work, not counting the long gestation of ideas. The same Starfield, in fact, clearly demonstrated that an attempt to pull two such titans in parallel turns into a living hell with a bunch of remotes, a bureaucratic swamp and eternal approvals.

Against this background, along the way, in all the insider leaks and official words, one thought runs through the red thread: the main focus after space is the “Ancient Scrolls,” period. The conclusion here is extremely simple — a corporation can patch holes in Fallout 76 as much as it wants or keep an eye on remasters, but the numbered parts of TES and Fallout are never fully developed side by side.

Why can’t Fallout 5 structurally be released before TES VI?

The main trump card and at the same time a stone around the studio’s neck is the Creation Engine 2, which is already firmly booked under TES VI as the foundation of a new cycle. To transfer this entire technology stack, and with it top engineers, to Fallout 5 before the “Scrolls” go into release means, frankly, to kill both projects at once.

Also:

• Publicly confirmed — Fallout 5 is strictly the second number after the sixth “Scrolls”.
• Internal estimates hint that TES VI still has years of polishing and optimization ahead, using the same hands that are needed for Fallout.
• An attempt to drive horses now will run into the same desynchronization of teams, which, by the way, was trumpeted by former employees after Starfield.

As a result, such a scenario, in principle, looks to the Bethesda leadership not just questionable, but economically and technically disastrous.

Fallout 76, a TV series and a “temporary replacement” of the license plate

While gamers are frantically Googling the release dates and arguing about which will appear first, Bethesda itself seems to be using the strategy of “milking the wait” through what is at hand. Fallout 76 is constantly receiving fresh content, transforming from an ugly duckling into a stable feeder that keeps fans in check.

The insane success of the Amazon show, by the way, boosted HYPE to the skies and gave the studio a great trump card — the audience can be fed a media feed without rushing to announce the game. There’s a lot of whispering in the industry about remasters of old classics like Fallout 3 in order to somehow silence the airwaves. In fact, the online version plus the series is your “numbered part” for the next five years, while TES VI is being brought to mind.

A cautious forecast of the release dates of TES VI and Fallout 5

If we add up the pace of Starfield and the current status of the “Scrolls”, a rather sober, albeit sad picture emerges. The Elder Scrolls VI is apparently still in the midst of development, and it will take at least a few years to finish. Analysts call the window somewhere around the late 2020s or even the early 2030s.

Fallout 5 will become a full-fledged flagship only when TES VI survives the release rush. So get ready — Fallout 5, apparently, will fly deep into the 2030s, and this is still an optimistic forecast.

Bottom line for fans: what to expect and how not to deceive yourself

In short, if we discard the superfluous and answer the main question, the situation is as follows. Dreaming of Fallout 5 before TES VI is a waste of time; priorities are set, budgets are distributed. Scrolls take over everything from the engine to the best minds. Fallout 5 is a next—generation project, not a quick reaction to the success of the series. Perhaps the most rational thing to do is just keep an eye on Fallout 76 updates and wait for news about TES VI, realizing that a full-fledged trip to the Wastelands will happen closer to the middle of the next decade.