Bethesda director wants Fallout 5 to keep you playing for 600 hours

Fallout 5 is likely to be Bethesda’s next game after The Elder Scrolls 6, and the devs are already talking about keeping fans playing for hundreds and hundreds of hours.

It’s been seven years since Fallout 76, and a decade since the last main entry in the post-apocalyptic series, Fallout 4. A new game is unlikely to arrive any time soon, either, as Bethesda are mostly focused on the next Elder Scrolls.

However, while it won’t hit shelves for many years, the devs have been openly talking about Fallout 5, after recently confirming that it will be directly impacted by the successful TV show.

Now, Studio Design Director Emil Pagliarulo has offered insight on how big they want the title to be when it does finally arrive.

Fallout 5 could have up to 600 hours of content

In an interview with Game Informer, he said that he wants to “give fans 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, you know, 600 hours.”

While this doesn’t necessarily mean that Fallout 5 will take 600 hours to complete, it strongly suggests that there will be plenty to keep fans occupied long after the credits roll.

Fallout 4’s story can be beaten in around 30 hours if you mainline, but a completionist run takes closer to 200 hours altogether. However, many fans still come back after achieving 100%, whether it’s to continue building their base or to try out a new mod.

Even Skyrim, which turned 14 years old this year, still has a solid community that is constantly trying out new ways to play. So, it’s not usual for Bethesda games to be packed full of content.

In the same interview, Pagliarulo also made it clear that while he wants Fallout 5 to be familiar to fans of the old games, it’s important to move with the times, adding:

“That would be my hope going forward: Keep doing what we’ve done, and also to evolve. And evolve in a way that is where the industry has gone and where players have gone, so you’re not stuck in the past.”