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Fallout 5 is now official. That's the headline from Bethesda's update on the future of its RPGs, which confirmed the game is currently in pre-production, alongside a confirmation that the game is being built on an enhanced version of their Creation Engine.
Obviously, the game is years from release since pre-production is the early stage where a game's shape is still being figured out, well before full development gets going, so anyone hoping this means Fallout 5 is close should recalibrate now.
Both flagships now run on Creation Engine 3
The more concrete news is technical. Bethesda confirmed that both Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls VI are being built on Creation Engine 3, a shared technology platform the studio have been developing since Starfield launched. They describe it as letting their teams support multiple projects at once, with new tools, rendering and systems.
Bethesda's engine has been a long-running point of criticism, and it will be interesting to see if this modern new iteration allows them to make their games faster and look better since those two are major complaints from fans.
Obviously, The Elder Scrolls VI is Bethesda's primary focus, with the majority of the team on it. Fallout 5 is the project running behind it so expect to start hearing about it after the fantasy RPG is released in a year or two.
On Elder Scrolls VI itself, Bethesda struck a confident but vague tone, acknowledging the long wait since Skyrim, which has now passed 65 million copies sold across 15 years. They said they're "where we planned to be", that they love how it looks, and that they're playing it daily. No date, no window, no footage.
I'd suggest you simply read this as Bethesda confirming Fallout 5 is real and has moved past the "eventually" stage, which is genuinely worth something after years of the game existing only as a vague promise. It also slots into a broader Fallout update that included confirmed remasters of Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and a new Obsidian-developed Fallout project.
With Elder Scrolls VI still undated and soaking up most of the studio, and Fallout 5 only now in pre-production, the realistic wait would probably be five to six years if not even longer. But at least we'll have the TV show, Fallout 76 and the remasters to consume until then.
