Todd Howard says the words ‘Fallout 5’

Bethesda, which recently delayed Starfield into next year and hasn’t shown anything substantial about The Elder Scrolls 6 since announcing it in 2018, is already thinking about what comes after. In an interview with IGN, Bethesda’s Todd Howard said Bethesda Game Studios is planning on making Fallout 5… eventually.

“Yes, Elder Scrolls 6 is in pre-production and, you know, we’re going to be doing Fallout 5 after that, so our slate’s pretty full going forward for a while,” Howard said. There’s no indication about when we can expect Fallout 5 to be released. Given how long we’ve been waiting for Starfield and the fact that we know basically nothing about The Elder Scrolls 6 — note that Howard said the game is still in pre-production despite being announced four years ago — it seems likely Fallout 5 is a long ways away from actually coming out.

Fallout 5 would be the next game in the post-apocalyptic series after Fallout 76, which had a pretty rough launch. But it sounds as if Fallout 5 isn’t the only game Bethesda Game Studios is thinking about, as Howard noted to IGN that “we have some other projects that we look at from time to time as well.”

Starfield, the studio’s upcoming sci-fi RPG, is comparatively much closer on the horizon, currently set to launch sometime in 2023. Bethesda debuted 15 minutes of Starfield gameplay on Sunday at the Xbox and Bethesda showcase.