Bethesa’s RPGs are typically gargantuan experiences that players end up playing for years and years on end, and while a lot of that is down to their sheer longevity, it can also be attributed to the fact that new instalments in those franchises take an inordinate amount of time to come out. For instance, The Elder Scrolls 6 only entered full production last year, with Skyrim approaching its 13th anniversary. Meanwhile, though the Fallout TV’s show’s success has brought about a sudden uptick in sales and engagement for Bethesda’s Fallout games, the series’ next mainline instalment is several years away, to say the very least.
As you might imagine, Bethesda Game Studios is as keenly aware of those long gaps as fans of those franchises are, and during a recent interview with Kinda Funny Games, Todd Howard said the studio is looking into ways to be able to release games at a faster pace.
“They do take a long time, and so I think one of the things we’re focused on here is obviously making sure they’re of the highest quality, but also finding ways to increase our output,” he said (via VGC). “Because we don’t want to wait that long either, right? It’s never our plan, but we want to make sure we get it right.”
On the topic of whether Bethesda could work with an external partner to perhaps release a Fallout spinoff, similar to Obsidian’s acclaimed 2010 title Fallout: New Vegas, Howard would only say, “I would say we’ve always had those conversations,” before going on to talk about Bethesda’s collaboration with Amazon on the Fallout show, as well as upcoming content for Fallout 76.
During the interview, Howard also seemed to suggest that Bethesda had two unannounced Fallout projects in the works. Read more on that through here.
Interestingly, recent reports have also claimed that Microsoft is looking into ways to fast-track the process of getting the next Fallout game out the door as much as possible.