Obsidian Entertainment is reportedly making a new Fallout game, led by Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer, according to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. The report arrived in the same week Microsoft cut around 1,600 jobs across Xbox, including 52 at Obsidian itself. Nothing is official yet.
For anyone who still holds Fallout: New Vegas as the high point of the series, the report that landed this week is the one we have wanted for over a decade. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier says Obsidian Entertainment, the studio behind New Vegas, is now building a new Fallout game with New Vegas director Josh Sawyer leading it. The trouble is that this news did not arrive on its own; it came wrapped inside one of the ugliest weeks the games industry has had in years. So before we let ourselves celebrate, it is worth separating what has actually been reported from what we wish were true.
What Bloomberg Actually Reported
According to Schreier, Obsidian has cancelled several projects, including a planned sequel to Avowed (that’s a shame, Seinfeld would say), and shifted toward a new entry in the Fallout series. The Avowed sequel was reportedly “going well” and on track to be announced within the year, but it did not fit the strategy of Xbox chief Asha Sharma (I already like her for that alone), so it was shelved. The new Fallout is said to be led by Josh Sawyer, who was already directing a role-playing game close to Fallout in structure and theme, and Bethesda, which owns the series, would reportedly be involved. Every outlet running this story, from PC Gamer to Windows Central, points back to the same single Bloomberg report. There is no official confirmation from Obsidian, Bethesda, or Microsoft, no platforms, no engine, and no release window; treat all of it as reporting, not fact.
Why Josh Sawyer’s Name Is the Whole Story
Strip out the studio politics and one detail is doing all the work here. Sawyer directed Fallout: New Vegas, arguably the best Fallout title since Bethesda took it over from Interplay, and for a large part of the fanbase the best-written and best executed of the lot. A New Vegas successor built with Bethesda’s blessing was the great “what if” of the past decade, and this report is the closest we have come to it actually happening. If it holds up, it is not simply another Fallout; it is the New Vegas team, or what remains of it, being handed the keys again. That is a rare thing in an industry that usually buries its best pairings, and it is worth being honest about how good it would be.
The Price Tag on the Dream
However, this is where the enthusiasm has to slow down, because the reported pivot did not come cheap. The same reporting ties it to a brutal round of Microsoft layoffs. A WARN notice shows 52 people let go at Obsidian, roughly a quarter of the studio, while ZeniMax Online, the Elder Scrolls Online team, lost 213, part of 379 ZeniMax cuts in Maryland alone. Across Xbox the week erased about 1,600 jobs, close to a quarter of them from those two studios, and Microsoft has signalled that up to 1,600 more could follow by the end of its fiscal year. id Software was gutted in the same wave. A new Fallout is being framed as good news, and it may well be, but it is being built on the wreckage of an Avowed sequel that people were proud of and the careers of hundreds who will not be around to make it.
What We Actually Know, and What We Do Not
For all the excitement, almost nothing here is settled. This is early, unannounced, single-sourced work; some Obsidian staff are reportedly staying attached to the cancelled Avowed sequel in the hope of one day reviving it, and the studio is still finishing downloadable content for The Outer Worlds 2 and working on Grounded 2. While I never enjoy hearing about layoffs in the gaming industry, I will shed not a single tear after Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2.
In the end we have to remain aware of the fact that this is still only a rumor and even if it were to be accurate we will be years away from the actual new New Vegas game. It is comforting though to know that we can always get back to the old New Vegas and replay it, this time enhanced by a bunch of mods that do the work Obsidian never had the time or budget to finish themselves.
