It will probably be quite a while before audiences see hide or hair of Fallout 5, as Bethesda Game Studios is no doubt going to be hard at work on The Elder Scrolls 6 for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, the next chapter in the Fallout story is sure to garner quite a bit of hype when it’s eventually revealed, especially as the IP enjoys newfound popularity in the wake of Amazon’s successful television adaptation.
But what will Fallout 5 actually look like when it does arrive? The last single-player entry in the franchise was Fallout 4, which launched all the way back in 2015, during the early stages of the PS4/Xbox One generation. Needless to say, a lot has changed since then, both within Bethesda and the broader games industry. With these shifting expectations, not to mention evolving game design trends and Bethesda’s broader reputation, there’s every possibility that Fallout 5 will showcase radical departures from series tradition, at least in some ways: being derivative of older 3D Fallout games could result in a sense of monotony. But learning some lessons from the 2D, pre-Bethesda Fallout releases is a different story entirely.
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The Case for Fallout 5 to Feature a Wasteland-Born Protagonist Like Fallout 2
Fallout Has Focused On Vault-Dwellers for Too Long
Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and the Fallout television show all follow protagonists that are unfamiliar with the atomized remains of above-ground society. This makes quite a bit of sense, of course: what better way to make the player connect with the protagonist than by having the protagonist be just as green as they are? By making the outside world alien to the main character, they can serve as a surrogate for the audience. This also justifies expository dialog, and is a generally intriguing premise for a story.
But this route isn’t the only way, as demonstrated by Fallout: New Vegas, a game that many consider to be the best in the franchise. New Vegas‘ player-character has virtually no backstory, which allows players to exercise their imaginative powers for a more rigorous role-playing experience. Looking even further back, Fallout 2—developed by Black Isle Studios before Bethesda took over the series—features a player-character born and raised in the wasteland itself. Putting players in the shoes of this more established, worldly protagonist is an interesting choice, as it recontextualizes the game world and lore, showing it from the perspective of one more familiar with it. Revisiting this premise could serve Fallout 5 well.
It Would Be Interesting To See Bethesda’s Take on Fallout 2’s Story Ideas
Obviously, Bethesda’s approach to developing Fallout games is markedly different from Black Isle’s. While the latter leveraged a typical CRPG formula and style, the former took a bolder, more expensive approach, launching the franchise into the realm of 3D and never looking back. While it’s rather unlikely that Bethesda would ever revert to the top-down CRPG formula (even as recent releases like Baldur’s Gate 3 show that there’s still room for it in the modern market), there’s no reason why the company couldn’t borrow other ideas from earlier games, and the wastelander protagonist seems like a fairly promising one to ape.
It would be cool to see Bethesda’s signature environmental design and dynamic open-world staples, but from the perspective of a character with a less cushy upbringing. Moreover, centering Fallout 5 on a wasteland-born hero could help further flesh out the series’ lore, painting a more complete and intimate picture of the world beyond the walls of the vaults, not through the eyes of an outsider, but someone with a real connection to the war-torn land.
Fallout
Fallout is a franchise built around a series of RPGs set in a post-nuclear world, in which great vaults have been built to shelter parts of humankind. There are six main games, various spin-offs, tabletop games, and a TV series from Amazon Studios.
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