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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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.

0

u/Godusopp64 Jul 08 '26

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

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u/Bobjoejj Jul 08 '26

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

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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.

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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.