Even if Fallout 5 is still many years away from release, that hasn’t stopped plenty of speculation over the next major entry in the franchise following the absolutely massive success of its TV adaptation. While the Fallout show has been raising just as many questions as answers when it comes to the lore of the series, it might have already confirmed the playable setting for Fallout 5.
During an interview with the BBC Newsbeat, Todd Howard himself went on to state that “Fallout 5 will be existing in a world where the stories and events of the show happened or are happening.” While this could simply be a further implication that the events of the show are just as canonical as any from the games, it’s possible that the show itself will directly tie into Fallout 5 and its potential setting.
Where Will Fallout 5 Take Place?
What’s even more telling about Todd’s interview is that it pretty much confirms when Fallout 5 will occur in the overarching timeline of the series, that being the year 2296 at the absolute earliest. While this news isn’t too surprising, given that every mainline Fallout game follows a chronological order, aside from Fallout 76 and Fallout Tactics, it still provides even more context for what to expect from Fallout 5.
With the setting of each Fallout game playing a significant role in the overall experience from the environments, characters, and types of factions inhabiting it, its no wonder that one of the biggest questions on everyone’s mind isn’t when Fallout 5 will take place, but where.
While there is no shortage of fantastic locations Fallout 5 could explore, there’s one location fans have been theorizing as the next-generation setting that has only gotten more believable as time goes on.
San Francisco Would Be Super Interesting
With speculation from fans like Piper-Bob going back several years ago, Fallout 4 made plenty of references to California during its main storyline, specifically how “In Kellog’s memories they talked about San Francisco. A lot.”
Given that Fallout as a whole has a long history of teasing major elements of their next game, like how “In Fallout 3 they talked about the Commonwealth, The Institute, and the Railroad,” all in a single game, it’s not exactly hard to believe either.
Another example of Bethesda teasing games includes the Oblivion Crisis and Alduin mentioned in Morrowind, or Fallout 3 teasing Vault 76 in its Project Zeta expansion.
While this could be excused as the setup for the Fallout TV show itself, Todd’s interview seems to be adding “more fuel to the fire that the location of 5 will likely be San Francisco,” as noted by Reddit user Next_Historian9382.
Given how much development is going into evolving the post-Fallout: New Vegas NCR and the west-coast Brotherhood of Steel, a new game set in San Francisco sounds like the perfect way to return to the series. Even outside of capitalizing on the TV show’s popularity to draw in new fans with the release of Fallout 5, California is a classic setting for the post-apocalyptic series as a whole.
With incredibly diverse biomes, plenty of iconic landmarks, and pre-existing lore just begging to be expanded on, Fallout 5 taking place in San Francisco would be an exciting boon for the series. Even if the mainline games tend to stick with coastal locations for their settings, going back to California would also be an excellent opportunity to explore a Fallout 5 DLC expansion set in the Pacific Northwest, or through fan-made mods.
- Created by
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Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky
- First Episode Air Date
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April 10, 2024
- Where to watch
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Amazon Prime Video
