Over the weekend it was confirmed that the rumoured Fallout Legacy Collection was indeed real, and has a release date of the 25th of October 2019. With this second collection of the Fallout games coming so soon, it got me thinking about the last one to launch, and the big new game that followed shortly after, Fallout 4.
Seeing a Pattern
Fallout 4 was announced at E3 2016. Bethesda shocked the world by announcing the game with a new trailer, and hefty gameplay showcase, only to finish us off with a release date of November in the same year. The game had been highly anticipated and rumoured for so long that fans were ecstatic to be getting their hands on it so soon. When Fallout 4 launched it was a like a revival of the franchise, with Fallout 76 getting announced not too long afterwards, a game which is now filled with avid Fallout fans every day.
However, before Fallout 4 launched in November 2016, the Fallout Anthology released. This collection of Fallout games packaged together the original Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Fallout Tactics, and Fallout New Vegas with all previously released DLC for all games as well. This collection launched almost by surprise in October 2016, just a month ahead of the release date for Fallout 4. Whether the plan had always been to launch this collection in an effort to drum up even more interest in Fallout 4 isn’t definitively known, but it was a brilliant marketing strategy either way.
Back to the Future
Fast forward to 2019, and we see that the Fallout Legacy Collection is launching this month. While we haven’t got a confirmed new Fallout game on the way, we do know that Bethesda plans to launch the next big update for Fallout 76 in November. This update is called Wastelanders, and revamps the entire game from the ground up. Wastelanders will add NPCs to the game that Todd Howard famously said has none, and brings new quests into the fold, including a brand new main story quest.
It would be easy to suggest that the release date for the Fallout Legacy Collection has been placed just before of this update in order to drum up interest in the franchise ahead of a big release once again. Fallout 76 had a lot of bad press when it launched, due to the number of bugs in the game, and to a degree those criticisms have never left it. Wastelanders is an opportunity to fix these bugs, but also rebrand the game as one that isn’t associated with a rocky launch.
Bethesda could be viewing Wastelanders as a way to soft-relaunch Fallout 76, and attract many more new players to the Fallout MMO. However, there’s definitely a voice in the back of my mind, and I’m sure it’s in yours too, saying that a Fallout 5 announcement can’t be too far away. It will be five years since Fallout 4 launched next year, which is the perfect amount of time to develop a brand new Fallout game in. Most fans want a sequel to New Vegas, which will sadly never happen, but a new spin-ff for the franchise could be just what it needs to get back on track.
With The Outer Worlds releasing this month, and then on the Nintendo Switch in the future, the developers that made arguably the best Fallout game on the market could steal a lot of fans away from Bethesda. An announcement for a Fallout 5 would be a good way of keeping those gamers interested in the brand and universe they’re so invested in, without losing them to a completely new one.
Whether or not a Fallout 5 announcement comes before the end of 2019 only time will tell. Let us know what you want from the next Fallout game in the comments.