Fallout 5 Influenced the Direction of the Fallout TV Show

Fallout 5 is still many, many years away from ever seeing the light of day, but it’s now known that the upcoming game helped shape the direction of Prime Video’s Fallout TV show. Back in 2022, Bethesda’s Todd Howard confirmed that Fallout 5 would be the company’s next project after it ends up releasing The Elder Scrolls VI. Given that the next Elder Scrolls entry is still far off from its launch, this means that Fallout 5 likely won’t arrive until after 2030. Despite this, Howard seems to already have some core ideas in place for Fallout 5 and didn’t want them to be used in the franchise’s adaptation to TV. 

Speaking to Den of Geek, Howard addressed recent comments from Fallout showrunner Graham Wagner about how the television series is essentially being viewed as Fallout 5. Rather than adapting the story that will eventually be seen in Fallout 5 one day, Wagner and fellow writer Jonathan Nolan made clear that the Fallout show tells its own standalone story in the same universe. This then prompted Nolan to say that those working on the show are already privy to some details tied to Fallout 5 that Howard had previously shared with them as a way of ensuring they wouldn’t use the same ideas.  

“Well, there were some things where I said, ‘Don’t do this because we are going to do that in Fallout 5,”” Howard said of the conversations he had with Nolan and Wagner about the next game in the series. With this in mind, it’s clear that Howard already knows the direction that Fallout 5 will go in even though he won’t end up fully working on the game for many more years. Fortunately, the Fallout TV series should help to bridge that gap and give Fallout fans their fill for the time being. 

While it’s not known when Fallout 5 will end up releasing, the Fallout TV show is set to launch on Prime Video exactly one month from today on April 11. The show’s first season will consist of eight episodes in total, with all episodes being released at a single time. Be sure to stay tuned to our coverage here on ComicBook.com over the next few weeks as we’ll have a ton more to share with you about Fallout over that time. 

[H/T VGC]