John Carpenter–best known for his legendary horror films like The Thing and Halloween–is evidently big into gaming, and says one of the games he’s most looking forward to at the moment hasn’t even been officially revealed yet.
“I have loved the Fallout universe for years so anything they do next, I’m ready for it,” Carpenter said in a recent interview (via IGN).
Carpenter listed the next Fallout game–which currently has no title and no release date–as one of three games he’s most excited to play. Notably, the other two games that made the list–Saber Interactive’s upcoming shooter John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando and Illfonic’s upcoming Halloween–are both adaptations of Carpenter’s work, whereas Fallout 5 obviously is not.
Bethesda has plans to release a new Fallout game once it’s finished with The Elder Scrolls 6, and announced that Fallout 5 had been “fully greenlit” as of July 2025. Still, details are sparse, and the current state of the game is unclear. Earlier this month, it was revealed that Microsoft may have scrapped a currently in-development Fallout title, and a former Fallout character artist recently revealed that he thinks Bethesda may outsource the next Fallout game to a different studio.
As for the games John Carpenter is currently playing, Fallout once again makes the list. Per Carpenter, he’s a huge fan of Fallout 76.
“I am still spending a lot of time in Fallout 76 and honestly having a great time with it,” he said of Bethesda’s Fallout MMO. “The world is big, messy, complicated, and full of strange corners with things that want you dead around every turn. It is dense, there is a ton to discover, and I keep finding reasons to come back.”
But Carpenter’s taste in games expands far beyond the Wasteland. In addition to Fallout 76, the 78-year-old director also listed 1991’s Sonic the Hedgehog, the original Assassin’s Creed, Horizon Zero Dawn, Borderlands 2, and Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy as his most-beloved titles.
“Sonic is where it all started for me, fast and bright and had that early gaming energy where you always felt like something might go wrong at any second,” Carpenter said. “I still go back to it, it’s very nostalgic.”
In other Bethesda news, the studio’s space-faring RPG, Starfield, is scheduled to arrive on PlayStation 5 on April 7. Starfield will launch on PS5 alongside its new Terran Armada DLC, which will be available on all platforms, and Bethesda says it isn’t quite done with its newest IP just yet.
“There’s places the [Starfield] team still wants to explore,” a Bethesda rep said in a recent media call. “There’s things and lore we’re excited about. So yeah, we have some plans, but nothing to announce today.”