If Bethesda hadn’t acquired Fallout, Bethesda Game Studios planned on creating an original apocalypse game whose title Todd Howard recently revealed. The publisher originally obtained the rights to Fallout in 2004, courtesy of a deal with Interplay Entertainment that allowed Bethesda to develop and publish Fallout 3. In 2007, the year prior to the RPG’s PC and console release, the company purchased the apocalyptic IP outright for $5.7 million.
The commercial and financial success of the seminal 2008 title encouraged Bethesda to pursue another entry. However, BGS’ then-ongoing work on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim prevented it from leading the charge. Developer Obsidian Entertainment was contracted for New Vegas as a result, which seemed particularly wise since it had been founded by veterans from the original Fallout team – Black Isle Studios. Of course, BGS has since retaken the helm, releasing Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 in 2015 and 2018, respectively. But what if Bethesda never struck a deal with Interplay Entertainment all those years ago? According to Todd Howard, he and his team would’ve built an apocalyptic IP of their own.
During a Reddit AMA wherein he praised Obsidian’s work on New Vegas, Bethesda Game Studios Executive Producer Todd Howard fielded multiple fan questions. One, in particular, recalled a 2018 interview with journalist Dean Takahashi, in which Howard said that BGS would’ve created its own post-apocalyptic franchise if the Fallout acquisition didn’t work out. Howard said the project in question bore the title of Apocalypse Road and “had a great logo with a street sign.” Unsurprisingly, the developer didn’t offer any more specifics about what Apocalypse Road may have entailed in the long run.
Evidently, Bethesda’s acquisition of Fallout worked out for the best in many respects. The company’s since produced four titles in the series, including New Vegas, all of which brought something different to the brand as a whole. But while plans for Fallout 5 currently sit in the incipient stages of development, a new adventure in the series is undoubtedly many years out from release.
As of now, Todd Howard and Co. at Bethesda Game Studios are hard at work on Starfield, the development team’s first original IP in over 25 years. It seems an exciting next step, too, since the new adventure will take players to space in the far-flung future. Following a blowout of information during E3 2021, the group shared its intentions of launching the spacefaring project in November 2022 for PC and Xbox Series X|S.
Fallout 3 launched across PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 platforms in October 2008.
