Fallout 5 is a ways off. Bethesda director Todd Howard said earlier this year that the studio’s pipeline will see Starfield released first, followed by The Elder Scrolls 6, with Fallout 5 coming in last place. The RPG game is in an early stage of development and Howard also added last year that there’s currently a “one-pager” on what the team wants to make. So, to satiate our long wait time, we decided to ask a former Bethesda developer that worked on Fallout 3, 4, and 76 what they’d like to see.
We spoke to Nate Purkeypile, who was an artist at Bethesda for 14 years before leaving the studio to strike out on his own and make a horror hunting simulator called The Axis Unseen, which we talked to him about recently as well. Purkeypile has helped shape the worlds and aesthetics of Bethesda’s Fallout games, and while he has no inkling as to what the studio will do with the franchise next, he has some hopes just like the rest of us.
“Whatever I want to do is probably not what they want to do,” says Purkeypile. “I don’t think it will ever go outside of America for the core games personally. So it’s a matter of picking the places in America that would be the coolest and niche, I personally would say New Orleans, or Colorado.”
Colorado seems to have been a popular choice with fans over the years for Fallout 5, but Purkeypile came back to New Orleans during our discussion. “New Orleans always sounded like a really cool one to me.”
“I’ve also personally wanted them to get maybe a little wider and bring vehicles in eventually,” adds Purkeypile. “But I don’t know if that would ever happen either because it’s a very different approach when you’re designing a world with vehicles, the spacing of everything is completely different. Kind of like that Mad Max game.”
Purkeypile’s referencing the 2015 Mad Max game, which focused on vehicle-based combat and driving around an expansive wasteland. It could be interesting to see Fallout 5 go in an all-new direction with a focus on vehicles and a larger open-world but, as mentioned earlier, Bethesda itself is still in the very early stages of planning Fallout 5, so Purkeypile’s comments come purely as a fan at this point.
If you want to hear more from our recent chat with Purkeypile, there’s a whole Starfield interview on the site filled with perspectives on development, scale, and how Bethesda went about creating an entirely new universe. We also have an article diving into the Fallout 5 release date, potential locations, gameplay, story, and more.
