This November will mark ten years since the release of Fallout 4. That game was published seven years after Fallout 3. There was Fallout: New Vegas in 2010 (still need to finish that one, my friends swear it's the best of the series). And I suppose there was Fallout 76 in 2018 but that game just isn't the same. Fallout really is more of a single-player experience, though I know that Fallout 76 does have its loyalists.
So this will be a full decade without a mainline Fallout entry. Surely we're going to get word sometime soon that a new one is coming, right? Right?!?
The sad fact of the matter is, friends, is that video game production is now (a) very expensive and (b) very loooong. Grand Theft Auto V was first published in 2013. Its follow-up was announced two years ago and it's going to be fall of 2026 before it's released. Which if the trend continues means that Grand Theft Auto VII won't see the light of day until around 2040.
See where this is getting at?
So when I came upon this article at Gaming Bible about when we might expect to see Fallout 5, my heart fell. But I suppose I should already be braced for it. The next Fallout game may not get published until I'm pushing sixty. Maybe by the time Fallout 7 comes out I'll be looking forward to seeing Halley's Comet for the second time in my life.
Let's just get the obvious out of the way: there are many people reading these words who won't be with us when Fallout 5 comes out, and certainly not when Fallout 6 is released.
I've got something figured out though. A strategy that will help pass the time. I'm going to start a Fallout tontine.
You probably know the concept even though the word is fairly rare in the English language. A tontine is an agreement where a party of individuals put something in security. It could be a sum of money. It could be a more material item. And whoever is the last surviving member of the agreement gets the goods. There was an episode of M*A*S*H where Colonel Potter and his friends during World War I had saved a bottle of fine French wine, and the final friend left got the bottle to enjoy. It was also the subject of an episode of The Simpsons.
Here's the plan: I'm going to get some friends together. We're each going to contribute some money to the tontine. Whoever is alive when Fallout 6 comes out (I'm going to allow for robust health between now and then) gets the money, which after accumulating interest should be enough to buy a then-modern generation video game console, a new high-def screen, and a copy of the Fallout game.
No, seriously, this is what I intend to do. I may be coming up on eighty years old when the chapter of Fallout following the next game is released, but I'm going to do my best to play it. It's going to be a life goal. And if I don't make it to then, I will get the satisfaction of knowing that a good friend is going to play it in my honor.
I do NOT plan on doing this with a BioShock game though!!
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