The press cycle for Amazon’s upcoming Fallout TV show is in full swing, and a side effect is that we’re already getting some morsels of information about upcoming games. Co-creator Jonathan Nolan recently claimed that the upcoming series was essentially “Fallout 5,” which set off some alarms for folks for some reason.
“Our series sits in relation to the games as the games sit in relation to each other. It’s almost like we’re Fallout 5. I don’t want to sound presumptuous, but it’s just a non-interactive version of it, right?”
The quote made the rounds as gamers anxiously assumed that the show was somehow going to take the place of an official Fallout 5 game from Bethesda, even though the studio has already tacitly confirmed its existence and that it’s set to arrive sometime after the next Elder Scrolls game, which means it’s still many years off. If anything, Fallout obsessives should perhaps consider themselves lucky to be getting anything resembling a Fallout 5, since the show’s inevitably going to fill the gap between now and the distant release of the next actual game.
Nonetheless, Nolan has since tamped down the rumor mill, clarifying that the Fallout show is not in fact replacing the next game, and is actually steering well clear of it. In a follow-up with Den Of Geek at SXSW 2024, Nolan confirmed that the show, which takes place about a decade after the latest chronological installment (Fallout 4, set in 2287) is entirely its own original story that is at least partially informed by what game series’ director Todd Howard has told him not to do. Why? Because “we are going to do that in Fallout 5,” according to Howard, who says he has shared details of Fallout 5’s eventual story with the show’s creators and effectively called dibs.
With that flag firmly planted, co-showrunner Graham Wagner joked that they had instead made “Fallout 6.” The point, at the end of the day, is that the very cool-looking show does sit somewhere in the canon and chronology, but not at the cost of any future games that you aren’t going to see for a decade anyway. So for now, settle in with the show and Fallout 76, which is supposedly in a better place these days.
