Fallout 5: everything we know so far

By Sam Hill Updated August 29, 2024

Fallout 5 hasn’t officially been announced yet but, with renewed interest in the postapocalyptic series thanks to the new Amazon-produced Fallout TV show, we’re starting to hear more and more rumors about the new Wasteland adventure.

Where will the next game take place? What sort of factions will reign supreme in the region this time? And, most importantly, what is the name of the next dog companion?

We don’t know a lot about Fallout 5 yet, but we’ll keep this article updated as new information and rumors come to light.

Fallout 5‘s release date gets murkier every day. In 2022, Bethesda Director Todd Howard said that Fallout 5 wouldn’t happen until the developer finished The Elder Scrolls 6 (rumored to drop in 2026 at the earliest).

Now that the Fallout TV series has been a massive hit, there are a lot of people speculating that the developer should redirect its focus to the next Fallout installment to capitalize on the IP’s popularity. The way the current development schedule is laid out, the Fallout show will likely have peaked and died off before we even get a teaser trailer for the next video game. This is, of course, a massive flaw in the AAA gaming development cycle — games take too long to develop to truly capitalize on a moment like this.

Right now, Fallout 5‘s release date is pushing the 2030 mark based on Bethesda’s typical development timeline.

The only thing we know for sure about Fallout 5 is that the game will be set in the U.S. Despite fans always theorizing about what the postapocalyptic world of Fallout looks like in other parts of the world, Howard has publicly ruled out that possibility.

“My view is part of the Fallout schtick is on the Americana naivete and part of that,” said Howard in an interview with Kinda Funny Games. “And so, for us right now, it’s OK to acknowledge some of those other areas. But our plan is to predominantly keep it in the U.S.”

Another big question for the future of the franchise is what to do with multiplayer gameplay. The series was exclusively a single-player experience until the release of Fallout 76 in 2018. And that multiplayer effort has gotten mixed reviews over that game’s life cycle.