The new Fallout game isn't worth the sacrifice made to greenlight it
Topics: Fallout, Obsidian Entertainment, Xbox, Microsoft, Features
Featured Image Credit: Bethesda Softworks
Topics: Fallout, Obsidian Entertainment, Xbox, Microsoft, Features
It’s official: Obsidian Entertainment is making another Fallout game.
After years of fans begging the Avowed developer to have another swing at the Fallout series, it’s been reported that Obsidian has now started work on a new Fallout game.
Although details are light, the report also comes with claims that Obsidian cancelled an Avowed sequel following Xbox’s recently announced reset.
As Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reports, Obsidian has “canceled multiple projects and will begin working on a new game in the popular Fallout franchise as part of the division’s broader restructuring, according to people familiar with the matter.”
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He adds that an Avowed sequel was part of the various cancelled projects at Obsidian, which have all been cancelled to make room for this new Fallout game.
The new Fallout game will be directed by Josh Sawyer, who was lead designer on Fallout: New Vegas. Since then, Sawyer worked on both Pillars of Eternity games as director, as well as leading development on 2022’s Pentiment.
Schreier reports that following this, Sawyer was “directing a roleplaying game that was similar structurally and thematically to Fallout but was not part of the franchise.”
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While the news of Fallout’s return is sure to excite fans who have gone 11 years without a new single-player entry in the franchise, it feels a little difficult to get excited about it right now.
For starters, Bloomberg also reports that around “a quarter” of Obsidian’s workforce have been laid off, following Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s announced reset of the organisation which has seen 3,200 jobs cut across its various departments and subsidiaries.
This has already lead to a huge number of layoffs at id Software, Zenimax Online Studios, and Bethesda. Other studios such as Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions have gone independent, while developers Undead Labs and Ninja Theory are reportedly being sold off.
With Sharma also saying that Xbox will invest in its bigger franchises, such as Halo, Gears of War, and Fallout, the announcement of a new Fallout game in the exact same breath that many Obsidian employees lose their jobs doesn’t feel like something we can get excited about.
It’s very much Xbox’s “break glass in case of emergency” measure, seeing the popularity of the Fallout television series and the resurgence of games like Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4 as a way to earn a quick win by commissioning a new game in the series.
It also comes across as a shortsighted tactic on Xbox’s behalf. A new Fallout game should have been in the works much earlier than 2026, with a new entry ready to play when the first season of the show released in 2024.
But with how long it takes to develop a game in this day and age (on average, around five years), it means this game is probably not coming out until 2030 or 2031 at the earliest, which will likely be after the show wraps up and hype dies down.
All of this is to say: it feels very difficult to get excited about this new Fallout game, knowing that many people lost their livelihoods for this and that Xbox is very much fumbling around in the dark looking for a light switch.
And I say this as someone who’s been a Fallout fan since the very first entry.