Todd Howard, director of Bethesda Game Studios, has now made a formal announcement that Fallout 5 will be set after the Amazon Prime Video series—thus making the upcoming sequel the farthest into the franchise chronologically since time began. Recently, Howard explained that now the next mainline entry is positioned to exist in a world where the story beats of the television show have already seeped into the wasteland’s lore. This pronouncement squelches any remaining speculation about whether the studio might retreat to the series’ roots in a prequel land or stay tethered to the 23rd century.
By dating Fallout 5 somewhere past the events of the TV series, which is set in the year 2296, the next installment should now fall into the late 2290s or perhaps even the turn into the 24th century. That timeline shift stands in stark contrast to Bethesda’s last major release, Fallout 76, which was set as a prequel only twenty-five years after the Great War. Instead, Bethesda seems committed to a moving canon, where the consequences of games past-and now the television show-have shaped the state of the American ruins.
By such synchronization, those events currently playing out in the live-action New Vegas and California settings will be treated as either “ancient history” or established facts by the time players put on the shoes of a new protagonist for Fallout 5. Howard’s comments seem to suggest a level of narrative synergy between media that is rarely seen elsewhere, thus cementing the TV show not merely as a spin-off, but an actual bedrock for the interactive future of the brand. The writers at Bethesda are reportedly working very closely with the producers of the series to make sure no plot detail in the series inadvertently contradicts the creative outlook for the upcoming game.
While this is nice to have for a clear setup, it’s still far from seeing this thing launched. The project in development is still officially The Elder Scrolls 6 from Bethesda’s public standpoint, and Fallout 5 will now be the next one to wait until that project is completed. As of now, fans are left with a very definite answer: the timeline is moving ahead, and the wasteland of the future will be built directly on the ruins left by Lucy, Maximus, and The Ghoul.
