Working in high-level game development these days must feel like working in London during the Blitz. I’m not going to bother recapping the McCarthyesque bloodbath for which Xbox became responsible earlier this month, gut-wrenching as it is — I’ll limit myself to recapping the damage to our subject for this week, i.e., Obsidian Entertainment. In addition to losing somewhere between sixty and seventy members of its 285-person staff to this latest purge, an in-development sequel to last year’s Avowed has been cancelled. So too have a pair of unannounced projects.
But as any long-time reader of The Spieler will by now have guessed, by far the most interesting news from my perspective is the sudden announcement that Obsidian Entertainment will develop a brand-new Fallout game in lieu of its previous assignments. As is known to any remotely engaged student of modern gaming history, Obsidian is the studio responsible for developing Fallout: New Vegas, a triumph of the artform and one of the greatest games ever made in spite of a severely truncated development timeline and treatment by its parent companies bordering on outright abuse.
Even more eyebrow-raising is the complementary news that Joshua Sawyer has been tapped as the game’s director. Alongside many other important credits on which we’ll shortly reminisce, Sawyer was the Director and Lead Designer on New Vegas back in 2010. Having previously stated in no uncertain terms that he’d return to direct a Fallout game if and only if he were afforded substantial creative latitude free of undue constraints, the news of his elevation on this project is just about worth a shred of cautious optimism. So is the realization that a few other greybeards from Interplay and Black Isle1 have — apparently by coincidence — found their way back to full-time employment at Obsidian just in time for this project’s announcement.
It’s the craziest shit, you know. Had you told me just a year ago that Obsidian was developing a new Fallout game with Josh Sawyer at the helm and a murderer’s row of franchise royalty waiting in the wings, I’d probably have worked myself into an absolute lather of hype. But now, in 2026, these developments reach our ears amid what must be the darkest period through which the games industry has suffered since 1983 at the least. Among those of us who make a habit of watching the industry, any morsel of hype is inevitably tempered by the knowledge that high-level game design has become a stinking, bloodstained, egregiously mismanaged abattoir of professional fortunes and consumer goodwill. I want so badly to feel excited and energized by the prospect of a new, Obsidian-developed Fallout RPG, but much stands in the way of that excitement. We may as well try to make sense of it.
This week, we’re discussing the bizarre contradiction upon which this ostensibly forthcoming Fallout game is founded, to wit: even as no studio or team is better positioned to nail this project, one can scarcely even contrive a more unsuitable corporate environment in which its development is to take place. There’s certainly room for optimism among those who aren’t yet comprehensively beaten down by the gaming establishment, but sober-minded realism is called for. Over the rest of this installment, I’ll try to figure out precisely how to balance it.
Let me quickly explain my priors. There currently exist four full-3D, first-person RPGs bearing the Fallout moniker — 3 (2008), New Vegas (2010), 4 (2015), and 76 (2018) — and I’m of the marginally controversial opinion that only New Vegas among them is a great game. The others certainly have redeeming qualities (even 76), but FNV is a singular work of genius when put up for direct comparison with its siblings in the franchise. There were many reasons for that greatness, but all of them essentially boil down to the creativity and professionalism of the team at Obsidian, and the commensurately uncommon tolerance for risk that gave that creativity and professionalism room to maneuver.
But all the creativity in the world is worth little without a vision through which to channel it, and so it’s fortunate that New Vegas had a visionary at its helm of Josh Sawyer’s caliber. Sawyer’s career spans the breadth of this millennium, beginning with a Design credit on 2000’s Icewind Dale.2 He was elevated to Lead Designer for that game’s 2002 sequel and for 2006’s Neverwinter Nights 2, thereby cementing himself as one of the more storied and important figures in modern CRPG history. In between, he was Lead Designer on Fallout 3. Not the Bethesda version, mind you — he was in charge of Black Isle’s planned sequel to Fallout 2 until its principal figures left the moribund studio to form the very Obsidian Entertainment that now appears destined to return to the property. It’s no surprise, then, that Sawyer enthusiastically accepted CEO Feargus Urquhart’s offer to direct the Fallout spin-off that Bethesda offered his team in 2007.3
What most excites me about Sawyer’s being tapped to direct this forthcoming Fallout game is his demonstrable passion for New Vegas. That he was a capable and dedicated steward of its development is obvious enough from the quality of the finished product.4 No less impressive is that he continued to support the game on his own time after it was released: if you’ve never played New Vegas with his famous rebalancing mod, popularly known as jsawyer.esp, I urge you to install it for your next playthrough.5 It makes an enormous number of changes to the game’s balance and progression, producing a far more mature, challenging, and systems-driven experience than release version could deliver. Consider how uncommon it is for directors of high-profile, triple-A game releases to personally support their games post-launch — consider what dedication would inspire such a thing, and be therefore grateful for Josh Sawyer’s directing this new game.
But Sawyer isn’t the whole story. Or, at least, I strongly assume he’s not the whole story, because seemingly unrelated circumstances have conspired over the years to bring Black Isle’s Fallout figureheads back to Obsidian as full-time employees. Some of the most notable are:
The aforementioned Feargus Urquhart, who was president of Black Isle before becoming CEO of Obsidian in time for New Vegas’s development
Leonard Boyarsky, art director and lead artist on Fallout 1 and arguably the foremost progenitor of the franchise’s legend-making aesthetic — he’s now a key player at Obsidian, having recently co-directed both of the Outer Worlds games
John Gonzalez, Lead Creative Designer and Writer for New Vegas, responsible for almost all of that game’s main plot and its most memorable characters — after writing Horizon: Zero Dawn and its sequel, he announced his return to Obsidian in early 2025
And, last but by no means least, Tim Cain. Credited as producer, lead programmer, and original designer of Fallout 1, and arguably the single most important creative voice in the franchise’s history, he came out of retirement and returned to Obsidian late last year6
Since Xbox is now evidently calling the shots with regard to the studio’s production schedule, it seems only logical that these folks will have at least some involvement with the new Fallout game. I suppose it’s possible that they’ll keep their distance in order to work on their other projects (which would be an ominous sign for Fallout) or that they’ll just leave Obsidian outright (a positively fell omen, should it come to pass), but I have no evidence right now to support any of these possibilities. Accordingly, I’m prepared to risk future disappointment with my optimistic prognosis that the next Fallout game will be developed by the franchise’s most historically important and celebrated personnel.
So, assuming that’s the case — and, by God, I hope it is — then the folks in charge of developing this new game are about as perfect a team as one could possibly desire. Alas, it doesn’t bode well that they’ll be taking orders from the likes of modern Xbox leadership, and that’s what gives me pause.
Let’s not beat around the bush: Xbox is pushing an interstitial Fallout game because it desperately and urgently needs a win in the wake of its profligate bloodletting of late. Greenlighting a new installment in a beloved franchise and assigning it to the most beloved studio in that franchise’s history is about the most dicklessly straightforward means imaginable of manufacturing such a win. Based on what I’m reading about Xbox’s sudden and extraordinary changes in corporate strategy — in essence, a polar reversal from the acquisitions-and-growth strategy of the Phil Spencer era — it seems reasonable to conclude that the success or failure of this notional Fallout title is of borderline existential consequence for Microsoft’s gaming division. Microsoft itself has more than enough runway to survive without it, of course, but it could certainly use a PR victory of its own if for no other reason than to prove that it’s got something in mind for its shareholders’ futures other than the market’s fifth- or sixth-best GenAI chatbot. But while its parent conglomerate spends as if money had no value, the risk appetite at Xbox is as cavernously low as it’s ever been. My pessimistic expectation, therefore, is that the decision-makers with the power to order Obsidian around will do everything they can to minimize risk in the new game’s development.
So, what can we expect?
Well, put it this way: if I’m wrong and Josh Sawyer and his team — however much that team may involve other Fallout grandees — are given free hands to design and develop as they see fit, then I have no reason to predict anything less than a great game in the end. And if morale is kept high, i.e., if Xbox doesn’t continue to fecklessly gut Obsidian’s already reduced workforce in some ham-fisted effort to boost efficiency, then a game as good or perhaps even better than New Vegas is on the table.
Of course, given Xbox’s recent history of doing precisely the opposite, I have no particular reason to expect that its leadership has any interest in assuming the risk of such an endeavor. God forbid we find ourselves in this project’s dark timeline, then I predict instead a ruthless Bethesdafication of Obsidian’s formula, and I do not like the shape it takes in my mind’s eye. My paranoias are many: a strictly single-player experience with important content locked behind a deluxe-edition paywall; an in-game cash shop featuring worthless cosmetics and predatory microtransactions; a decree demanding “accessibility” in the form of staid, bland, and dumbed-down storytelling in a misguided effort to expand the potential audience; a retail price of $80 or more in spite of all the above… I could go on with this catastrophizing for some time.
I won’t, though, because I can’t stand to think so pessimistically about a forthcoming game that should, by all rights, get me as hyped as I’ve been for a game in a decade or more. So, let’s lay aside the negativity for now, regardless of how grounded and evidenced it may be, and fantasize instead about the best-case scenario. The first Fallout game since 2010 to feature a thoroughly developed setting and an intellectually mature narrative? A roleplaying system that rewards creativity and forethought over mindless dopamine-chasing? A legendarily excellent modding ecosystem to compete with the greatest in the medium? All of these outcomes are, at the very least, plausible.
Since Bethesda itself (supposedly) has all hands on deck to work on The Elder Scrolls VI, itself a couple years away at the least, the similarly anticipated Fallout 5 is probably a solid decade away. This implies that the time between Fallouts 4 and 5 will somehow be even longer than the already piss-taking interval between Skyrim and TES 6, and so one could very reasonably argue that the time is right for another Obsidian-style interstitial game to bridge the gap somewhat. I can’t fault Xbox leadership for hitting upon this strategy, blisteringly obvious though it is, since the logic behind it is generally sound. Nor can I perform any distaste over its having plucked the Fallout IP from Bethesda’s ravening maw — if Todd Howard et al. ever sincerely believed that the franchise’s fans would be content with occasional Fallout 76 content updates for fifteen goddamn years, then of course they were sorely mistaken.
But those of us who are in it for reasons beyond quarterly returns are now compelled toward vigilance and caution, because the eventual reaction to this new Fallout game could make or break a great deal of fortunes in Obsidian, Xbox, and beyond. As more information gradually comes out over the months and years to come, dedicated Fallout fans and our appraisals of Obsidian’s progress will be looked to as augury of their game’s reception and commercial performance. Gamers themselves, though broadly disrespected and dismissed by the non-gaming executives who shape high-level design, aren’t yet wholly powerless to affect the trajectories of those figures’ decision-making. If and when hype is called for, by all means indulge in it. And when some games industry journalist all but inevitably leaks news of anti-consumer decisions yet to be announced, let there be no quarter. We might just get a worthy Fallout game once all is said and done.
Or, I mean, maybe an underresourced Obsidian will grind away at it for the next five years before Xbox reshuffles its C-suite again, whereupon some hollow-faced ghoul will cancel the project and fire the entire studio. Even then, at least we’ll still have New Vegas.
Thanks for reading to the end! I appreciate that this installment was a real dog’s breakfast of cautious optimism and gloomy prognosticating, and I’m still not entirely sure how to feel. So, I’m very excited to hear your takes on this latest news coming out of Obsidian. Do you anticipate a worthy game at the end of it all? Why or why not? Let me know downstairs, and I’ll see ya next week.
Black Isle and publisher Interplay were responsible for the first two Fallout games in the late nineties.
Technically speaking, his earliest credit is as Web Master for Planescape: Torment. He probably didn’t have much creative control over the project in that capacity, but I like to think he wrote such good HTML that Black Isle promoted him.
Little-known fact: Bethesda’s first offer to Obsidian was a Star Trek game, which the latter turned down. I get a kick out of imagining the alternative timeline in which Obsidian became famous for making a Trek RPG instead of the best Fallout game.
Bugs, crashes, and general instability aside, of course. I’m of the majority opinion that New Vegas’ teething issues on release were largely a consequence of its rushed development cycle.
By far the best way to experience it in 2026 is JSawyer Ultimate Edition, a fan-created remake of jsawyer.esp that cleans up oversights and inconsistencies without straying from the mod’s original vision.
A tangentially related curiosity: when Tim announced his move back to Obsidian, he said he was working on a game he “knew” they’d ship but that would be impossible to guess at. I have a terrible premonition that this was one of the unannounced projects cancelled by Xbox leadership, but there’s no confirmation or straight denial to that effect of which I’m aware.
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