Bethesda has published a new statement which drops some major bombs (sorry) about the future of the Fallout series. In the statement, the company noted that those long-rumoured Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3 remasters are indeed real, teased a mystery Fallout project being developed with Obsidian, and – last but not least – announced that Fallout 5 is now in preproduction.

The next canon game in the RPG series, Fallout 5, didn’t get much information as part of this announcement, but Howard notes “Fallout 5 remains our long-range destination”. Given the post notes explicitly that there will be a massive celebration for Fallout Day 2027 (typically held on 23rd October), we can probably expect movement on the game around then. Don’t hold your breath, then.

As for the Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters, well – they’re finally officially real! Rumours about the games refuesed to die down for the past year or so. There are no dates for either, so how long we’ll be waiting to even see them remains unclear.

We don’t know much about the Obsidian game, but only last week we heard that the developer had reportedly been moved onto a new Fallout game by Xbox, at the cost of a sequel to Avowed. The studio also lost about a quarter of its staff in Xbox’s latest round of layoffs, which affected 3200 staff across the publisher’s studios.

Fallout 76, meanwhile, is getting a major expansion in 2027 called Raven Rock, which will act as a prequel to Fallout 3. We heard last month that the online game is finally getting native PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions with improved graphics and performance, but Bethesda is in the process of testing them first.

You can the full Bethesda message below:

Fallout is one of our biggest priorities today. Fallout 5 remains our long-range destination, and we have multiple Fallout projects in active development right now.

Fallout 76 continues to be home to millions of players exploring Appalachia together. With nearly 70 free updates released to date, the journey is far from over. In fact, we have a major Fallout 76 expansion planned for next year: Raven Rock, a prequel story to Fallout 3.

Fallout 4, the most award-winning game in the franchise, just celebrated its 10-year anniversary and recently passed over 35 million copies sold, continuing to attract a new audience every year.

We also know many players want to revisit previous Fallout experiences. While we’re not announcing any dates today, we have been working on remasters for both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

Fallout Shelter continues to be the most popular way to experience Fallout on the go, with more than 250 million players. There’s more ahead for Fallout Shelter, including new Seasons. An unscripted Fallout Shelter television project is also in the works with our partners at Amazon Studios and Kilter Films.

We’d like to congratulate Kilter Films and Amazon Studios on the 10 Emmy nominations for Fallout Season 2. Production on Season 3 is already underway.

And while we won’t host a traditional Fallout Day broadcast this year, we’re already planning something special for Fallout’s 30th anniversary in 2027, when Fallout Day will be celebrated live in Washington, D.C.

It’s interesting to note that the company has moved to announce Fallout 5: earlier this year, Todd Howard outlined his thoughts on Bethesda announcing games so far in advance, and detailed the problems that come with such a long window between announcement and release. Then again, he did reflect that he wishes he’d been more casual with the announcement of The Elder Scrolls 6 – maybe a blog post like this is his way of trying to be a temper expectations a little more.