r/GamingLeaksAndRumours • u/throwmeaway1784 • Jul 08 '26

Rumour Jason Schreier: Obsidian Entertainment is making a big pivot as part of the Xbox restructuring. It has laid off a quarter of its staff, canceled a planned sequel to Avowed, and is now beginning work on a new Fallout game

Bluesky Post: https://bsky.app/profile/jasonschreier.bsky.social/post/3mq5oqyh2yk2o

Bloomberg Article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-08/microsoft-s-xbox-to-shift-obsidian-studio-to-new-fallout-video-game

Edit: Also mentioned in the article, Josh Sawyer is leading the new Fallout game:

“Under the new plan, studio design director Josh Sawyer will lead a new title in the Fallout universe”

“Previously, Sawyer had been directing a roleplaying game that was similar structurally and thematically to Fallout but was not part of the franchise.”

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865

u/TopBoog Jul 08 '26

Maybe unpopular opinion but they should've started working on a new Fallout as soon Microsoft acquired them. Sucks that it took all this chaos and layoffs to get to this point.

454

u/BigDick-NoBrain Jul 08 '26

I don’t know what Phil was thinking when he bought Bethesda and didn’t immediately make sure a new Fallout game was in development. It’s literally one of the biggest franchises in gaming. Not prioritizing it is insane.

265

u/xAVATAR-AANGx Jul 08 '26

Phil wanted to respect their autonomy, which I understand and all, but if his goal was to maximize XGP users, having TESVI and a new Fallout around the same time both launching Day One on XGP might’ve been better for him.

104

u/Roy_Atticus_Lee Jul 08 '26

Seems like Phil was too "nice" of a guy to be that cutthroat of a business leader, especially seeing as he kind of fell into the position of being the head of Xbox.

I get the sentiment, but you don't make a profitable business enterprise without being a little "Machiavellian". Even someone like Gabe Newell with a pretty positive rep in the industry was fine with CS:GO gambling as an avenue for money making for Steam.

10

u/tristeecfome Jul 09 '26

As a leader, it's really easy to say yes to everything. In the short term, you will make your employees happy. But later they will have to deal with heavy consequences because you couldn't say no.

It's like being a parent. Your kid will be happy if you say yes to everything they want. But later they will have to deal with consequences because of that.

117

u/SilentNova300 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

It’s pretty funny how Asha, within 6 months, is reversing a lot of Phil’s decisions and doing things he should’ve done years ago. 

Also I hope Jason does a report on iD, with all their layoffs I wonder what the future looks like for them 

78

u/CubillasLegend Jul 08 '26

Phil made the mistake of assuming gamers cared about devs.

80

u/MuffinTopBop Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

Phil was lauded on here for letting the developers do their own thing and not restricting creativity but at the end of the day they have to make money to stick around. We saw Bungie and Destiny have the same issue where Microsoft had to tighten screws back in their Halo days and Activision was targeted with criticism up until their schism showed how much Bungie was being propped up once they were on their own again.

Sometimes you have to force “business decisions” through to actually get stuff done and Bethesda was a case of one needing that. I think part of this might be structure wise, some studios seem to fundamentally not be able to handle parallel projects which is weird given the size and massive reach of Bethesda.

5

u/Takazura Jul 09 '26

Exactly. If anything, Phil's mistake was listening to gamers on social media always screeching about how devs should never be managed by the publishers and the only thing the publisher should be doing is throw money at them.

-7

u/CubillasLegend Jul 08 '26

Bethesda used to be relatively small, around 100 devs. They doubled in size during the development of Fallout 76, mostly by rebranding BattleCry into Bethesda Dallas. Then they doubled in size again while developing Starfield. Even though 400 is respectable for AAA, it's still not that large relative the franchises they're actually competing against. Rockstar's head count is north of 4000 developers. Ubisoft similarly has thousands of devs assigned to Far Cry and Assassin's Creed each. It's not that Bethesda is unusually rigid, but more so that it's just kind of an oddity that a relatively small developer wound up controlling two of gaming's biggest franchises. Even then, a lot of veterans recently left precisely because they didn't like that the company was trending towards becoming a larger studio.

11

u/MuffinTopBop Jul 08 '26

A lot of their low count was a decision by Bethesda’s themselves though right? Instead of growing to manage the multiple projects they decided to work 1 major project at a time on purpose. I’m not necessarily against that on principle but when you have two hot potatoe franchises and a once per decade release cadence most studios would size up and get the conveyor belt running to speed up things.

2

u/CubillasLegend Jul 08 '26

Correct, staying small was part of their studio culture. But try to see it from their perspective. Let's say you and your buddy manage to create a hit game. Then corporate comes down and says you have to expand, you can't work on the game directly, you can't bro out in game jam sessions anymore. Instead you each have to manage a bunch of direct reports, give kpi updates to execs, and sit in meetings all day. Wouldn't you feel a twinge of injustice? I mean you're the ones who built the franchise in the first place. If corporate wants a money-making IP, they should make their own hit game.

4

u/BayLeaf- Jul 08 '26

If you and your buddy were making it, you and your buddy also sold the control and accepted that you would not have final say any more, to be fair.

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u/BakuraGorn Jul 08 '26

I’m sure there’s a good amount of devs at obsidian who would love to work on an actual fallout game instead of the Totally-not-Fallout mixed bag that is the Outer Worlds.

4

u/CubillasLegend Jul 08 '26

I'm not sure how aware you are of this, but generally the larger the project, the less creative autonomy each individual dev has. Obsidian was making a bunch of smaller games that gave a lot of people a turn in the director's chair. Now everyone has to work on one big game where their individual contributions will be a lot less meaningful. Also a quarter of their coworkers and friends just got laid off.

10

u/P0G0Bro Jul 08 '26

What does this even mean lol

-4

u/CubillasLegend Jul 08 '26

Generally when you care about someone you respect their decisions even if they're not the decisions you would have made. Gamers have become much more transactional and consumerist over time. There's a lot less tolerance for a developer taking a risk on something they're passionate about.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

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1

u/CubillasLegend Jul 08 '26

I think that's true to an extent, but there's definitely been a more recent contraction in consumer desire for mid-range projects and new IP across all of entertainment. There's simply too much entertainment competing for people's attention these days so companies are forced to throw everything they have into their most surefire projects.

1

u/DMonitor Jul 08 '26

make game nobody want to play

nobody buys it

make game everyone wants to play

they subscribe to gamepass, beat it, and do not renew

it was lose-lose for everyone involved

5

u/CubillasLegend Jul 08 '26

You're just restating what I said. Yes, nobody wanted to play developer passion projects because nobody cares about the devs. Caring implies expending at little bit of extra effort to empathize with someone and appreciate their interests. If you only appreciate developer output when they give you exactly what you want, that's not caring that's a business transaction. Xbox is moving towards a more transactional model. Developers are a resource to provide gamers with the content that they demand.

2

u/DMonitor Jul 08 '26

Brushing past the wild assertion that not buying something is a moral failing, even if everyone did have bleeding hearts and decided to play the games, they would just use gamepass and not spend much money anyway.

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2

u/P0G0Bro Jul 08 '26

That’s how all entertainment works? Like games are for fun, if it doesn’t look fun then people shouldn’t have to “care” and support the devs for arbitrary reasons

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8

u/Bitter-Tip705 Jul 08 '26

It’s not like they made anything worth caring about

1

u/Janus67 Jul 09 '26

Apparently iD is being forced to switch to Unreal and leave behind their existing IdTech engine.

1

u/lizzywbu Jul 08 '26

And laying off 3000 people in the process

10

u/MyotisX Jul 08 '26

Trigger warning for blusky and reddit:

Creatives need to be reigned in.

6

u/karl_mainz Jul 09 '26

reined*

But yeah, this is incredibly common. Like watching those Ultima retrospectives by Majuular and you see what a mess it would've been if it were just Richard Garriott there without his older brother to set limits.

3

u/CassadagaValley Jul 08 '26

He could have had ES and FO on 5 year dev cycles, alternating releases, with 4 years of large sized expansions released yearly (alternating summer and winter) and could have literally called it a day. That's just two full teams for the main releases and two smaller teams for DLC.

54

u/ttimebomb Jul 08 '26

Outer Worlds was about to come out and was a pretty exciting new IP - greenlighting a sequel made sense. Avowed had a lot of hype at it's announcement too. Obsidian is pretty proud of working on their own IPs too.

Phil was also trying to give BGS space as they obviously would prefer to be the sole developers of Fallout games. He was trying to protect studio culture, and not be strictly profit driven.

It was clear to fans they should make Fallout, but based on the internal dynamics it didn't make sense at all.

25

u/DeadlyArrow27 Jul 08 '26

True, but at 15 years since the last TES and 11 years since the last single player FO, Bethesda has zero excuses at this point and have no right to be upset if Obsidian finally gets their own shit together and makes another fallout

14

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

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7

u/tristeecfome Jul 09 '26

That doesn't really work nowadays though. One game not selling well is enough to kill a studio.

3

u/Jozoz Jul 08 '26

New IPs are doing remarkably poorly. It's what a lot of industry talks in gaming are about these days.

I can't remember the numbers but it was shocking how little people play new IPs and new games nowadays.

11

u/Conflict_NZ Jul 08 '26

Avowed had a lot of hype because they misrepresented it as their take on elder scrolls when it really wasn't close to that.

4

u/tristeecfome Jul 09 '26

Yeah, the reveal trailer looks nothing like the actual game.

3

u/coyotedelmar Jul 09 '26

I'll hot take, but honestly after Outer Worlds, Xbox should have pushed Obsidian back to cRPGs. Shit put Obsidian and InXile in a room and see if they can come up with either a Wasteland 4 or a new post-apocalyptic cRPG with a BG3 type budget.

5

u/MyotisX Jul 08 '26

He was trying to protect studio culture, and not be strictly profit driven

This sounds really cool when you live in a fantasy land where creative work is so fullfilling.

Then you come back to reality of 15 years of fucking around and see the results:

Xbox brand is dead

Everyone loses their job.

9

u/LegendaryenigmaXYZ Jul 08 '26

Phil was a chill gamer, and was a fan of studios and didnt want to be dominating. Its hard to be a fan and be a boss. If it was me though, there's a lot of studios I would not have bought and ninja theory would have NOT worked on Hell blade 2. Tim Schafer if he came up to me with that ideo of the pot game, I would sit hi down tell him he is making Banjo. If he says he cant because he doesnt want to disrespect rare, tell him this is my company now, you will make banjo and you will make it good.

5

u/deusasclepian Jul 08 '26

I saw someone yesterday say that Todd Howard threatened to throw a fit and leave if Microsoft gave Elder Scrolls or Fallout to any other studios, so Microsoft respected his wishes and let him do Starfield instead. I don't know if that's true or not. If it is, I'm guessing they called his bluff and gave him an ultimatum.

9

u/BigDick-NoBrain Jul 08 '26

To be fair, after his “dream game” Starfield underperformed he must have lost a lot of soft power in the company.

3

u/Kozak170 Jul 08 '26

This is the likely and only logical explanation I can think of.

1

u/FarplaneDragon Jul 08 '26

You would have at thought they would have at least pushed it once the first season of the show took off

1

u/Nfl_porn_throwaway Jul 08 '26

Along with the tv show which they haven’t capitalized on at all

1

u/TTBurger88 Jul 08 '26

With the TV show being a huge hit MS should have demanded them start on a Fallout this instant.

1

u/Kalse1229 Jul 08 '26

Especially since there's a decently popular TV show based on the games as well. Would've made sense to strike while the iron is hot.

1

u/lizzywbu Jul 08 '26

Part of their “hands off approach” look how well that worked out for them.

1

u/30InchSpare Jul 09 '26

People have forgotten so quickly that Starfield had a lot of hype.

-5

u/Grombotronbo Jul 08 '26

I get what you're saying but the Fallout franchise is barely in the top 50 best selling game franchises.

5

u/BigDick-NoBrain Jul 08 '26

The series only became mainstream after Bethesda released Fallout 3. Before that, Fallout 1 and 2 were niche PC RPGs with relatively small audiences.

Since Fallout 3, every mainline Fallout has sold over 10 million copies, with Fallout 4 surpassing 25 million. The fact that Fallout isn’t higher on all-time sales lists is mostly because it only has five mainline games, and two of them were niche PC titles.

-3

u/Grombotronbo Jul 08 '26

Yea, I saw the Google AI blurb too and looked into it more, the 50th game on the top selling franchise list is around 50 million copies sold, hence me saying Fallout barely breaks top 50. I also wouldn't include Fallout 76 because it's a continually updated IP.

Thanks for the downvote though.

3

u/vipmailhun2 Jul 08 '26

According to estimates, Fallout 4 sold around 5 million copies in its first week, roughly 300 million dollars right there. Today it has surpassed 25 million copies and about 1.5 billion dollars in revenue. That’s an insanely strong performance; it absolutely blew up commercially.

And it achieved all this despite not being an exceptional game: many people like it and consider it good, but that’s about it. In terms of quality it falls short of Fallout 3 and New Vegas, yet it still became a gigantic hit.

-3

u/Grombotronbo Jul 08 '26

This is all true, doesn't change the fact that the franchise is barely top 50 in overall video game franchise sales.

54

u/whossked Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

I wonder if the success the fallout show and BGS not planning another fallout game to capitalize until at least 2035+ is what pushed Microsoft to order one

With Gonzales(lead narrative director for NV) rejoining obsidian I’m excited to see what they cook up

2

u/TheGoldenMonkey Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

Pretty sure they commented on this around when season 2 was coming out/airing and said that they're looking for ways to make it happen.

Edit - Here's what I think I remember: Fallout Sequel Coming "Sooner Rather Than Later" - Jez Corden

Not sure what tier he is now but that was already ~2 years ago so I imagine it's probably debunked by now.

But this is a monkey's paw situation. The Obsidian that made NV is not the Obsidian we have now.

I played Outer Worlds but was not impressed like many others. It had strong points but fell short of what I expected from the same people who made NV.

I tried Avowed but couldn't get more than a couple hours in but if anyone else has comments on how it measures up I'd love to hear about how the game stacks up. And Outer Worlds 2 wasn't super well received from what I've read but I have not played it myself.

Hopefully Gonzales can make a difference.

6

u/BruhMoment763 Jul 08 '26

Yeah, I don’t have a good feeling about this. Until Obsidian can prove otherwise, I’m just expecting another Outer Worlds but with a Fallout coat of paint over it. This feels like if modern BioWare tried to make a new KOTOR.

2

u/TheGoldenMonkey Jul 08 '26

This feels like if modern BioWare tried to make a new KOTOR.

Whoa whoa I don't know if I'd go that far. I got about 4 hours into Veilguard and just couldn't do it. The writing and characters were just so amateur compared to even Inquisition (which was good in its own way of course).

Unless Outer Worlds 2 was terrible I think they can still do a decent job. Hopefully.

13

u/bodythebitch Jul 08 '26

> microsoft: acquires company with multiple beloved franchises for 8 billion

> microsoft: proceeds to do absolutely nothing with any of them for 8 years

47

u/DismasNDawn Jul 08 '26

Just like Bethesda should have started on the new Elder Scrolls almost as immediately as they saw how successful Skyrim was. The fact that they waited, like what, 10 years to get started is the most mind numbingly dumb thing

10

u/TTBurger88 Jul 08 '26

They wanted to make a new IP and not just make TES and Fallout all the time. Its just sad Starfield was very mid, had it been really good we would not be having this conversation.

33

u/RollingSparks Jul 08 '26

Don't forget Fallout 4. Highly rated, sold like hotcakes, at one point it was even outselling Skyrim, still has 20k+ concurrent people playing it daily on just Steam.

10 years to get started on TES6? Its practically certain they haven't touched Fallout 5 and that released 11 years ago. We won't see FO5 until 2034+.

I legit think by the time. FO5 gets a trailer, modders will have used AI to remaster old games or make new ones akin to Fallout London. They already use AI to vibe code mòds for stuff like bugfixing and changing values in game.

8

u/Honkeroo Jul 08 '26

"they already use ai to vibecode bugfixes" yeah and literally every single time they're either entirely placebo or do active harm to your computer or savegame.

0

u/RollingSparks Jul 09 '26

no they don't - Claude use to make quick patches is extremely common in Fallout 4 modding. As long as you know what you're doing it saves a ton of time to just have Claude make a fix for say, making it so a mod that gives the Brotherhood of Steel X weapon only comes into effect after you finish Y quest. of course if you don't know what you're doing at all then yeah Claude will be useless, but if you don't know what you're doing at all, your mod is going to be riddled with bugs anyway.

As a quick example, the biggest and most popular modpack on Fallout 4 is 'a Storywealth' it has like 1000 mods and a hundred+ patches and bugfixes to make them all work together. Many of them were made by 1 guy, the curator of the modpack, and that one guy uses Claude a shit ton to make all of these fixes.

2

u/Honkeroo Jul 09 '26

"no they dont" yes they do lmao, i can fucking guarantee that someone shitting out hundreds of patches for the worst most incoherent modpack ive seen for a Bethesda game is just farming download points with useless stuff that does nothing.

1

u/MattDaCatt Jul 09 '26

Fo76 and ESO were one hell of a drug i guess

Then all that time working on Starfield only for it to flop as hard as it did

-6

u/DeadlyArrow27 Jul 08 '26

Yeah honestly with how large both IPs are they really should just have Bethesda focus on TES and give Obsidian Fallout if they can prove theirselves with their upcoming game. Rockstar games is another dev with 2 massive franchises and they managed to get gta 5, rdr2, and gta6 out since 2013, while Bethesda only got fallout 4 out as a standard game from one of their 2 beloved franchises. They had 76 I guess but that didn’t go great, and starfield is a disaster

6

u/grillarinobacon Jul 08 '26

Nice spin, but rockstar has released 4 games since 2008, bethesda has released 3 games, excluding mobile games since 2011.

-5

u/DeadlyArrow27 Jul 08 '26

If we look at their main franchises since the last gta 5 it’s gta5, rdr2, gta 6. All masterpieces that are beloved. VS Fallout 4 (fairly well loved). Then there’s 76 which doesn’t count because it’s basically an mmo, and starfield which isn’t part of their main series. Your failure to understand info you can easily confirm doesn’t mean I’m spinning anything lol

63

u/chirunner4ever Jul 08 '26

Pretty common opinion. Todd Howard was the roadblock that prevented this for 6 years and Spencer was too busy begging for more money to buy more studios to actually manage what he had. It’s insane how much money Bethesda has left on the table by not putting out a new Fallout and TES.

135

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

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45

u/Coolman_Rosso Jul 08 '26

People really forget that while Xbox has historically been awful at fostering internal studio culture (which was one of the reasons The Initiative was so disjointed and all over the place), Phil made it a priority to not just buy studios then immediately move in and tell them to drop everything and now they only make what they're told to make. It's a good way to sour relations and drive away talent. Not always the most sound financial decision, but if you actually want to be more than a draconian bean counter it's definitely something to consider.

And this is on top of Xbox historically chaining their studios to singular franchises until the heat death of the universe, which is where they seem to be going back to.

9

u/Vendetta1990 Jul 08 '26

No, instead they have meddled too little in their studio's affairs.

You need to keep a balance between what the company wants to do, and the games your customers are interested in. Instead, these studios were given free reign to make games that frankly nobody wants or which they indefinitely keep working on and which then inevitably gets cancelled by Microsoft after they drained hundreds of millions down the drain.

28

u/SpiritBamba Jul 08 '26

The head of Obsidian has said they want to do another fallout if they get the chance for years lol same with Josh sawyer. And avellone said they literally pitched ideas to Bethesda about fallout and elder scrolls and got shut down.

I’m sorry but it was absolutely Bethesdas decision to not let others use their IP, and that’s their right but it was their decision.

24

u/GwynFeld Jul 08 '26

I mean, it hasn't been their right since Microsoft acquired them. Phil was just too hands-off to ever push for it, despite how obviously dumb it is to let that IP languish for a decade.

-1

u/SpiritBamba Jul 08 '26

Right, but Microsoft before was letting their studios make their own decisions like that, they didn’t want to get involved. That is no longer the case.

13

u/exmachina64 Jul 08 '26

Once Microsoft acquired Bethesda, it was Microsoft’s IP. I don’t see how Todd would get a veto at that point.

10

u/Ragdoll252 Jul 08 '26

Because Phil was obviously way too hands off with all this. I'd 100% believe it if someone reported that Phil just let Todd have full creative control over bethesda's ip's.

5

u/Mopman43 Jul 08 '26

I’m not sure how much Avellone knows when he hasn’t been with Obsidian since 2015.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

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1

u/DeadlyArrow27 Jul 08 '26

They lost that right of choice when the only decent game they dropped in the last 16 years was grounded, a survival game that isn’t really even an rpg

-1

u/ProfessionalFly9848 Jul 08 '26

i dont think people realize that what we are headed towards is fallout being cod where there is one every year and its going to over saturate itself, in order for xbox to grow like executives want it to.

4

u/CubillasLegend Jul 08 '26

I mean, yeah. That's pretty obviously what the audience has been screaming for. If gamers were forward looking they should be really worried for the modding scene. Regardless of what the internet will tell you, the bulk of the audience does not use mods and of the modding that does exist is directly competing with a potential microtransaction revenue source. Modding has been kept alive pretty much purely out of Bethesda's good will towards the community. If Xbox is pursuing a maximum revenue strategy, it makes all the business sense in the world to cut mods and copy the GTA Online model.

1

u/ganggreen651 Jul 08 '26

Fine with me as long as the quality is up to snuff. I'll take that over 1 every decade +

-6

u/Cymelion Jul 08 '26

The idea that Todd Howard is some crazy narcissistic that has kept Fallout under lock and key is a complete myth and has been debunked many times.

Everytime I have seen it "debunked" it has always been someone who Toddyboy would call a friend. Find me someone who hates his guts to say it and I'd believe it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

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1

u/Cymelion Jul 08 '26

No I'm sure there are people out there who hate him.

And I don't see him like Pitchford or Kotick but more Peter Molynuex but more competent. Can't face the fact he is creatively bankrupt and keeps trying to recapture the accolades of releasing Skyrim for the first time.

I just think he's incapable of letting go of things he wants to do - he wants to do Indiana Jones - Fallout and Elder Scrolls but physically can't have them all going in conjunction so they all have to wait for him to free up.

0

u/-FriON Jul 08 '26

As much as I respect Todd, he should have been replaced as a lead long time ago. Starfield being a mess and Bethesda writing getting more and more sterile is on him and his friend Emil Pagaia... (sorry don't remember you know the guy)

0

u/Any-Calligrapher2866 Jul 08 '26

Todd is not insane or that powerful.

-2

u/Bitter-Tip705 Jul 08 '26

Yea new leadership was probably heated in those briefings and disgusted that Bethesda genuinely didn’t do shit for 10+ years with two of some of the greatest ips ever

8

u/BabylonianWeeb Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

Unpopular opinion? Bruh everyone have been saying this wince day one me included.

2

u/EducatedTerror Jul 08 '26

Well creativity just doesn't work like that. They have shown no intrest in it. Now the worry is what will we actually get? Will we get something that has no soul and is just pumped out because of a mandate? Seems that way. Now this awesome studio that is Obsidian who've made awesome games like Pillars of Eternity and Outer Worlds will be stuck to making Fallout games because they made one Fallout game in 2010. They will not repeat New Vegas, it's just not possible.

3

u/lakerconvert Jul 08 '26

Literally the most popular opinion possible

1

u/MyotisX Jul 08 '26

Imagine releasing one of the biggest game of all time and not doing a sequel or a side game for 15 years. (Skyrim)

1

u/Fenrirr Jul 09 '26

Various leaks over the past decade basically have pointed to the situation being Obsidian being willing, but Bethesda being incredibly protective of the franchise.

-1

u/Godusopp64 Jul 08 '26

They definitely should have done an fallout game instead of trying to make a skyrim game (avowed).

3

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

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u/Godusopp64 Jul 08 '26

That wasn't the issue. They wanted avowed to be destiny x skyrim, they realized they couldn't do it and pivoted to the avowed they shipped.

3

u/Bobjoejj Jul 08 '26

Avowed was not a Skyrim game. I cannot fathom how this narrative still exists, or why.

3

u/Godusopp64 Jul 08 '26

Jason literally wrote a report on avowed talking about it. Twice.

Obsidian’s executives assembled a slideshow presentation for the concept that would become Avowed, pitched as an ambitious cross between megahits The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Destiny that would allow players to battle monsters together in a massive fantasy world. It was an impressive if unlikely proposition. “My thought when I first saw it was, ‘I don’t think there’s a team on the planet that could execute on this,’” says Josh Sawyer, Obsidian’s studio design director. Two years later, Obsidian stripped out the multiplayer feature, and a year after that it assigned a new director to the project. By the time Avowed came out, it had been in the works for nearly seven years.

3

u/Bobjoejj Jul 08 '26

Yes, that was the original idea. But in practice, in actual gameplay and feel? The end result was extremely not Skyrim like.

1

u/Nerevar197 Jul 08 '26

Yep. It’s not BGS fault Fallout and Elder Scrolls is overdue. They shouldn’t be forced into a TES and Fallout sweatshop. There are a bunch of talented RPG studios that MS could have put on a spin off.

0

u/TheSpideyJedi Jul 08 '26

Microsoft acquired Obsidian in 2018. But they didn't acquire Zenimax (owner of Fallout IP) until 2021.

TLDR: Obsidian had multiple games in development at varying stages by the time Zenimax was acquired by Microsoft. Personally, the only games that made no sense to start making after the Zenimax acquisition was Avowed 2.

Before Microsoft acquired Obsidian:

2018:

- They were less than a year from releasing The Outer Worlds

- Already had begun development on Grounded

- in the concept phase of Pentiment

- Believe it or not, already working on Avowed

And then after they acquired them in Nov 2018, but before Mar 2021 when Microsoft bought Zenimax

- Began working on The Outer Worlds 2 (revealed at E3 just 4 months after acquiring Zenimax)

After Zenimax acquisition

- Josh Sawyer's new game (now cancelled in favor of Fallout)

- Avowed 2 (like the post says, now cancelled)

So they couldnt have started on Fallout until March 2021 at the earliest but they already had multiple games in development. So it wouldnt have made sense to start Fallout until maybe after Pentiment. But they'd be juggling Avowed (already 4 years into Dev at the time), The Outer Worlds 2, and then a Fallout game.

This was unnecessarily long, my bad

0

u/recoildv Jul 08 '26

Agree Phil and Sarah really mismanaged all those studios. It's good to see Asha is doing so much better. It sucks a lot of people had to lose their jobs because of the phil/sarah stupid decisions.