Bethesda design director wants a Fallout 5 you could play for up to 600 hours because "that's the kind of games we make"

As Fallout season 2 introduces new fans to New Vegas and continues pulling viewers into the wasteland, we're all side-eying Bethesda over a potential new installment. There's been little mention or movement on Fallout 5, but Game Informer asked some of the prominent devs about their hopes for the Fallout franchise moving forward.

"I would be happy with a game that is as successful as the previous Fallout games that continues to give fans what they love," Emil Pagliarulo, studio design director, states. "To give them a story that they can get into and systems that they love and really just an experience that they play not for 20 hours and not for 100 hours, but an experience they can play for 200, 300, 600 hours, because that's the kind of games we make."

If ever there's a hallmark of Bethesda games, exorbitant playtimes is it. I've sank hundreds of hours into Oblivion for sure, and I'm definitely pushing three figures on several other of the studio's releases. Whatever form Fallout 5 takes, it has a lot to live up to in terms of scope and replayability, because Fallout 3, New Vegas, and 4 are mind-bogglingly large.

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You can spend dozens of hours exploring and fulfilling side-quests without ever leaning into the main narrative. In fact, I'm not entirely sure I've fully completed the story of any Fallout. I did it once in Oblivion, and it was a concerted effort since I'd already amassed considerable playtime.

Pagliarulo hopes to evolve the series too, with quality-of-life updates dictated by what players don’t know they're missing. "In the Oblivion remaster that came out, people forget in the original Oblivion, you couldn't sprint. So, of course we're going to add that in the Oblivion remaster," he explains.

He finishes in poetic fashion: "The industry moved on, and so, we want to move on with it." It's a good time to be a Fallout fan.

Bethesda lead says in the "time between Fallout 4 and Starfield," the "one thing" the studio has learned is that "there is no one definition of an RPG."