Even though Bethesda has its hands full with Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6 right now, lots of fans want to know what the next Fallout game is going to look like. It's been more than six years since Fallout 4 came out, and while fans do have Fallout 76 to enjoy, the multiplayer experience doesn't scratch the same itch as a classic singleplayer Fallout title. Odds are that Fallout 5 will look familiar in a lot of ways, from the likely return of the SPECIAL system to a new irradiated setting, but Fallout's next installation could try something very different in terms of its narrative.
Longtime fans of the franchise may have noticed that Fallout games often trend towards a particular theme. Many of the games task the player with finding something. Whether it's an important person or a valuable object, players are always scouring the wasteland for something of value that they've lost. The theme has worked for the Fallout franchise overall, but ideally it won't be the crux of Fallout 5. This narrative structure has been used to the point of repetitiveness by Fallout by now, so Bethesda should strongly consider writing an entirely different narrative for the next game.
Fallout's History of Search-Driven Stories
Fallout can trace its history of finding things to its earliest days. The very first game in the series, Fallout from Interplay Entertainment, tasked players with finding a computer chip that can repair Vault 13's water filtration systems. This ends up only being the first section of the story, since afterwards, players are tasked with finding the source of Super Mutants, which act as the major threat of the game. Sending the player on a quest to find something certainly worked for the first Fallout game's narrative, but more importantly, it kicked off a trend that runs through most of the franchise.
Tons of Fallout games since then have similar searches with different objectives. In Fallout 3, players leave Vault 101 to find their missing father before the villainous Enclave does so first. Fallout New Vegas has searching elements too. After the Courier is left for dead in the Mojave Desert, they come back from the brink and start a journey to find their would-be killer, as well as the package that was stolen from them. Fallout 4 is famously driven by a search too. At the start of Fallout 4, players see their spouse get murdered and their son get kidnapped, resulting in a search through the Commonwealth for this lost son.
Plenty of video game franchises repeat story devices as they expand, but it's remarkable just how often Fallout has built stories around searching for a specific missing person or thing. Although Fallout's individual stories are generally pretty solid, the franchise's approach to storytelling has gotten a little predictable thanks to its focus on searching for things in the wasteland. Fallout 5 might be better off if it abandons this usual Fallout premise and instead builds itself around a unique story concept of some kind.
Possible Fallout 5 Story Angles
There are tons of new story styles that Fallout could try in the next game. For instance, Fallout 5 could potentially take notes from the new Saints Row game and tell a story about a wasteland survivor gathering power as they build their own faction. The Fallout world is stuffed with different factions vying for power, so it would be interesting to design a new protagonist around a faction that's under the player's command from the very beginning, rather than letting players pledge allegiance to a faction later on. A Fallout game where players compete with other factions for control could channel Fallout's themes of political tension and the nature of war perfectly.
Fallout 5 could also task players with solving a mystery without giving them an obvious, concrete thing to search for. For instance, in the game's opening, players might learn some strange or horrifying truth about the global resource crisis that led to Fallout's titular nuclear apocalypse. From then on, players may find themselves simultaneously trying to answer their questions about Fallout's distant past while fighting to survive in a wasteland that's subtly defined by the game's central mystery. Horizon Zero Dawn's central story had some similar narrative threads that Bethesda could study when designing a sleuthing-centric Fallout 5.
Bethesda clearly has a lot of different narrative options available to it, and it already has all the necessary tools to drive these narratives and others. Fallout is rich with lore thanks to its factions, the Vault system, the war that led to Fallout's apocalypse, and much more. Fallout games have historically used plots with a very specific focus to allow players to engage with these broad systems of lore, but Bethesda should strongly consider a different approach in the next game. Rather than giving players a small thread that connects them to the grand tapestry of Fallout, it should try dropping players right in the middle of the big picture.
Bethesda Can Experiment With Fallout
Sadly, it'll be a long time before fans see what's next for Fallout because of Bethesda's other works. Not only has Fallout 76 remained a priority, but other major Bethesda games mean there isn't much calendar space for a new Fallout release. Ultimately, though, that could be a good thing for Fallout 5. A long wait for the next game could give Bethesda time to think more creatively about the next game's concept. Over the next few years, Bethesda will have time to settle on a new angle for Fallout 5's plot and player motivation that freshen up the franchise.
There is cause for optimism that Bethesda is entering an age of reinvention. Starfield may borrow ideas from classic Bethesda titles like Oblivion, but its new genre, character creation elements, and other core concepts are all such fresh looks for Bethesda that it can hardly be interpreted as anything less than the start of a new generation. The highly inventive Starfield could suggest that The Elder Scrolls 6 will reinvent itself as well, meaning Fallout 5 will be next in line for an overhaul. If that's really Fallout's destiny, then hopefully Bethesda starts by looking at the game's plot.