The Fallout: New Vegas 2 dream dies a little more
In recent years, the Fallout fanbase has been split between two people, the ones who love Fallout 3 and the ones who prefer Fallout: New Vegas (well, the Fallout series is split on many things, but moving on). Since New Vegas released, a large part of the fanbase were hoping for another Obsidian-developed entry in the Fallout franchise. Unfortunately, it seems Bethesda doesn’t share these hopes.
In an interview with the Guardian, Bethesda Game Studios head, Todd Howard, said the franchise being outsourced to another developer again was “unlikely”, saying:
“I wouldn’t say never, but now that our company is so big, it’s always better to keep stuff internal … it becomes less likely, but I could never say never. I thought the Obsidian guys did a fabulous job.”
This comment will likely come as a disappointment to many. After Bethesda revived the Fallout series in 2008 with Fallout 3, they handed the reins of the franchise over to RPG veterans Obsidian while they worked on the next Elder Scrolls game. With Obsidian’s team consisting of former Fallout creators, such as Josh Sawyer, they made a lot of welcome changes and tweaks to Bethesda’s formula that were more in line with the series’ earlier entries. The end result was a game that many fans lauded more than Bethesda’s own entry; these sentiments were echoed further with the release of Fallout 4 which took away many of the RPG elements many loved.
The topic of another team-up between Bethesda and Obsidian has always been a touchy one after the company was hit with layoffs after failing to receive a bonus from Bethesda when they were one point off the needed Metacritic score of 85 (a point made more frustrating when most of the critical misgivings with the game were down to Bethesda’s own engine).
The Fallout series’ last entry, Fallout 4, was released in 2015. The new upcoming game in the series, Fallout 76, will take the series in a new direction moving into the online survival genre. Obsidian Entertainment has found themselves moving further into traditional design with their old school RPG series Pillars of Eternity. While it’s a shame to see we may never get an Obsidian Fallout game again, Bethesda’s response is an understandable one, and as Todd said, never say never.
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