Chris Avellone Revealed Obsidian Already Wanted to Make a New Fallout Game - But Bethesda Declined

On July 8th, Bloomberg released a new report confirming that Obsidian Entertainment will develop the next installment in the Fallout series. The studio is well known for creating one of the franchise's best titles, Fallout: New Vegas, released in 2010. The upcoming project will be led by Josh Sawyer, the lead designer of Fallout: New Vegas. This announcement caused quite a commotion among fans and raised some questions about the future of the franchise.

For a long time, it was assumed that Bethesda Game Studios was responsible for developing Fallout 5, especially given comments from studio head Todd Howard, who previously teased that the upcoming title would be tied to Amazon's TV show of the same name. However, confirmation that Obsidian is actually developing the next Fallout calls this into question. Additional information on this matter was recently shared by former studio head Chris Avellone, who was directly involved in the development of Fallout: New Vegas. According to him, Obsidian and Josh Sawyer had long proposed making a new Fallout installment, but Bethesda consistently rejected these requests. As a result, Obsidian had to change certain aspects of its project to make it more similar to Fallout. It now seems that Xbox has allowed Obsidian to take on the new entry in the franchise, meaning Bethesda Game Studios is no longer involved in Fallout 5's development. You can check out Avellone's comments from his conversation with users on X below:

“From what I heard, that was intended to be a Fallout game, but according to sources, Bethesda put the kibosh on that a while ago so it had to change its direction/tone from Fallout to something "similar" to Fallout.”

However, it is worth noting that Bethesda Game Studios has not made any specific announcements regarding the development of Fallout 5. Due to Microsoft's restructuring and yesterday's announcement that Obsidian is now handling the new game in the series, a lot of details still need to be clarified. At the same time, it is believed that the studio is also working on remakes of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. Neither project has been officially confirmed yet, but insider Jeff Gerstmann recently claimed to have seen footage of the Fallout 3 remake, and insider NateTheHate has also confirmed that an enhanced version of Fallout: New Vegas is in development as well. In any case, it seems Fallout fans have plenty of exciting news to look forward to over the coming years, with several new projects in the universe on the horizon.