New Vegas devs Obsidian are reportedly working on a new Fallout game, and only Microsoft could make news I’ve waited half my life for taste this bitter
I rather like Fallout: New Vegas. It’s one of my favourite games of all time, if not number one. Ever since I first played it as an impressionable teenager, I’ve been dying to see its developers Obsidian offered more chances to turn their well-honed talents for building deep RPGs with compelling worlds on the series about life after the bombs drop.
That’s what makes the fact I’m now getting to write the words ‘Obsidian are reportedly set to begin work on a new Fallout game helmed by New Vegas director Josh Sawyer’ with thoroughly mixed feelings as utterly galling as it is.
According to Bloomberg, that’s the Outer Worlds studio’s new direction as of this week, with plans for a sequel to Avowed and some other unannounced projects chucked in the bin as a result. Sawyer had reportedly been directing an RPG that was “structurally and thematically” similar to Fallout, but wasn’t a Fallout game, prior to taking the helm on this new Fallout game.
The pivot, of course, follows around a quarter of Obsidian’s workforce being laid off earlier this week as part of Microsoft’s latest round of mass layoffs. With around 1600 people thrown out of the window across the Xbox division, CEO Asha Sharma’s issued a decree to go all-in on established big hitter series.
It’s in that undeniably shitty context that the studio I’ve long craved more Fallout from are returning to the series. If I was a selfish dickhead who only cared about getting the games I think I want, I’d be running around the room celebrating, probably shirtless since it’s very hot in the UK right now. I’m not. I’m feeling gutted for Obsidian’s devs that, whether or not working on a new Fallout game is a prospect they’d be keen to pursue in a vacuum, they’re now having to do so as part of a push from management who’ve just forced them to say goodbye to a sizeable cohort of their colleagues.
It doesn’t feel like a triumphant return or a pleasant surprise to help tide everyone over while Bethesda take the time they need to get to and cook up the next mainline Fallout. It seemingly isn’t Obsidian getting to do something cool on top of being allowed to keep on trying to turn the quirky RPG series they’ve gotten off the ground in the years since New Vegas into games as beloved as household names like Fallout or The Elder Scrolls, even if some staff will reportedly keep working on the Avowed sequel for now in the hopes it might be revived one day.
It feels like a courier being knelt over a grave and told at gunpoint that this is the game that you will work on, if you want to convince us that we should hold off on pulling this trigger just a little bit longer. It feels like a band you dig returning from experimental records to release some new music that’s deliberately hitting similarly popular notes to their biggest past hits, because their manager’s blown a vast chunk of all of their savings on dodgy crypto investments, and now those mortgage payments are looking a lot more terrifying.
I’m not naive. I know professional studios have to make the games that make the most money, first and foremost. We all need to pay the bills. But rarely does it feel as though whether making a certain game is actually something a studio want to do from a creative perspective matters as little as it probably does in this case.
This new Fallout game from Obsidian, whenever it arrives, will more than likely be good, if not great. The vastly talented people working on it will pull on all of their RPG expertise and bust their asses to make the best game they can. It’ll probably make Microsoft more money than that Avowed sequel or another Outer Worlds entry would have.
I’ll probably enjoy playing it. I’ll also probably find myself repeatedly asking why it had to be born in circumstances as horrible as these.