Will Fallout 5 Return to the Fallout 4 Timeline or Follow Fallout 76?
Following the troubled launch of Fallout 76, a lot of questions are left concerning the eventual continuation of the series. Fans aren’t likely to see another Fallout game for quite a while; Bethesda’s next two games will be Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6, both of which are expected to be a year or two away at the very least. However, as we look ahead to an eventual Fallout 5, a key question concerns the series’ timeline; will the next game continue the franchise’s timeline past Fallout 4? Will it follow Fallout 76? Or, will it choose some new time period for itself?
When the Different Fallout Games Take Place
The Fallout series’ timeline is a long and complex one. The Great War which results in the setting of the series begins in the year 2077. (Coincidentally, the same year that CD Projekt Red’s upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 takes place!) After that event, Fallout 76 is the first game to occur in the post-apocalyptic timeline. Players emerge from Vault 76 on Reclamation Day in 2102, twenty-five years after the Great War began. The next game in the timeline is the original Fallout; players set out from that game’s Vault 13 in the year 2161. After Fallout follows a 36-year gap before the start of Fallout Tactics.
At that point, the games all take place in chronological order. Fallout Tactics takes place in 2197, while Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel begins in 2208. Fallout 2 starts in 2240, and there ends the original series made by Interplay Entertainment. When Bethesda took over the Fallout franchise, they chose to set Fallout 3 many years later, in 2277. From there, the games have generally taken place much closer together. Fallout: New Vegas takes place in 2281, while Fallout 4 begins in 2287. As such, it did seem that Bethesda was more interested in making only small jumps in time, rather than the large ones made by Interplay. This was a trend bucked by Fallout 76, however, which leapt almost 200 years back in time to 2102.
Is Fallout 5 Likely to Follow Fallout 76?
An important fact to remember as we look ahead to Fallout 5 is that Fallout 76 is considered to be a spin-off. When the game was first announced, Todd Howard was clear that the decision not to name it ‘Fallout 5’ was an indication that it was a spin-off, and that the next core game would be Fallout 5. Moreover, he stated that Fallout 5 would be a more traditional single-player title. (Not to mention the repeated statements that the multiplayer aspects wouldn’t change the direction of the franchise.) Of course, there might have been a chance that Fallout 76 could have gotten its own spin-off sequels if its format proved popular. However, that now seems rather unlikely.
So, given that so many aspects of Fallout 76 seem both unique to it and also intentionally different so as to set itself apart from the rest of the series; it seems unlikely that Fallout 5 would take place anytime close to it. Indeed, the decision to set Fallout 76 so far from the rest of the series could well have been an intentional way of making sure that the game didn’t have any major canonical implications. In a similar fashion, Elder Scrolls: Online takes place far in the past of Tamriel compared to the core Elder Scrolls games.
Will Fallout 76 Prompt Bethesda to Go Back to the Future?
Considering the extremely poor reaction from fans to Fallout 76; it’s likely that Bethesda will feel a need to return to a more established format. Not only would that mean a return to traditional single-player, but it’s likely that it would mean a return to the late 2200s. Of course, there’s no guarantee, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The stories in each of Bethesda’s Fallout titles have been mostly self-contained, after all. That means that there isn’t a great need to continue slowly advancing into the future from Fallout 4. Especially given the lack of long-range communication in the setting, most of the games have had very little reference to each other; indeed, there have only been a handful of minor recurring characters. However, the desire to distance Fallout 5 from Fallout 76 is likely to return the game to the 2280s or perhaps later.
Bethesda will no doubt have a long time to settle on a setting for Fallout 5. Indeed, unless they decide to contract a third-party studio to make another interim title, as they did with Fallout: New Vegas, then it will almost certainly be years before fans get to hear anything about the game. Given that large gap in time before the next release, the developers could make some radical decisions about the next game’s setting; decisions which could impact its placement in the timeline. For instance, the timeline placement might be largely irrelevant if Bethesda chose to set Fallout 5 outside of the US.
However, the odds are good that the next game will return to the more familiar future setting in some fashion; one way in which it could align itself with the core series in the eyes of players. After all, avoiding any unnecessary associations with Fallout 76 will probably be in Bethesda’s best interests.