Fallout: New Vegas holds kind of a weird spot in the Fallout canon. It’s widely regarded as the best of the Bethesda-era Fallouts (although personally, I preferred Fallout 3) and it’s also viewed by many as sort of a red-headed stepchild: No matter how many times Todd Howard insistently denies it, there’s a lingering sense among some fans that Bethesda—which did not actually make New Vegas—would like to bury it.
With all that in mind, not to mention that both Obsidian and Bethesda are now Microsoft studios, it’s not surprising that expressions of hope for a new Obsidian-made Fallout occasionally bubble to the surface. But would Josh Sawyer, the project coordinator, lead designer, and system designer of New Vegas, have an interest in leading the project? Well… sure. With some conditions.
“Sure,” Sawyer said when asked if he’d be interested in heading up a new Fallout during a recent Q&A session. “With any project I think it has to do with, ‘What are we doing, what are the boundaries that we’re working within, what am I allowed to do and not allowed to do?’ I think that with any IP, especially one I’ve worked with before, the question is, what do I want to do this time that I wasn’t able to do last time? And if those constraints are just really constraining then it’s not very appealing, because who wants to work on something where the one thing they want to explore is not possible to explore?
“I love the Fallout IP. I think there’s still a ton of stories that can be told in there and questions that can be asked about… society. But yeah, you know, any IP really is kind of like that though. ‘You want to work on this or that?’ I don’t know. What are we allowed to do and not allowed to do?”
Sawyer’s comments aren’t too far off those of Tim Cain, one of the co-creators of the original Fallout. Asked about returning to the series earlier this year, Cain said it would come down to whether the project offered him the opportunity to do something he hasn’t done previously.
“Every RPG I’ve ever made offered me something new and different that got me interested in making it,” Cain said in June. “It was the game itself that offered me something interesting that made me go ‘Ooh, I want to do that, I’ve never done that.’
“If someone came to me and said, ‘You want to make a Fallout game?’ My answer is: ‘Well, what’s new?’ I didn’t even want to make Fallout 2, why would I want to make a new Fallout? What’s different about it?”
Honestly, I don’t think it’s very likely that Sawyer or Cain will ever return to the Fallout grind, precisely because Bethesda RPGs are such iterative experiences that prioritize systems over narrative—not the sort of thing that seems likely to appeal to either of them. Dare to dream, and it’s always possible Microsoft could throw the series to either of them and say “do what you want,” but given the current state of the videogame industry—that is, strongly risk-averse and focused on big hits above all else—I won’t be holding my breath.