I feel like if Jason Schreier is breaking the news, it’s solid reporting.

Edited Wednesday at 06:41 PM2 days by Leferd

4 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Just a few hours ago I've read someone claimed "Avowed 2 is too far ahead to be canceled" and now there's news that it is canceled. lol.

https://www.thegamer.com/xbox-obsidian-new-fallout-game-cancelled-avowed-sequel/

Also, they are probably trying to pacify the people with claiming a new Fallout game by Obsidian has been green-lit. At this point, who knows what's true.

Obsidian doing Fallout was always a likely outcome.

Not only because they want to work on that themselves (they even pitched TES spinoffs to Bethesda way back, so who knows...)

But because it's just a BIG NAME. One of those that hasn't been "served" by a main line game in well over a decade too now. And it's obvious that Bethesda can't handle it all themselves at these crazy dev cycles (7 years plus for Starfield). Franchises such as Call Of Duty still release regularly because it's studios taking turns. Else, not a chance.

Question is, what is going to happen with inXile after Clockwork Revolution.

Edited Wednesday at 06:43 PM2 days by Sven_

Releasing a new Fallout every 2 years would be terrible too, though.

Just now, Lexx said:

Releasing a new Fallout every 2 years would be terrible too, though.

Ya, to be honest, I'm not even that hyped about Fallout anymore.
At least Obsidian's take may be spicy again, rather than another postapoc Bethesda theme park. There's certainly still themes and conflicts to explore in this world.

Hoping for another more adventurous smaller project too (see Pentiment et all).

Edited Wednesday at 06:50 PM2 days by Sven_

@Leferd hey man, it's been a minute since I've seen you.

3 hours ago, Sarex said:

@Leferd hey man, it's been a minute since I've seen you.

It’s been a while. Haven’t really been into Obsidian games since Deadfire and Pentiment. Saw the news on layoffs and Fallout, so figured I’ll check back on the old stomping grounds.

7 hours ago, Lexx said:

Releasing a new Fallout every 2 years would be terrible too, though.

An RPG (or whatever Fallout 4 was meant to be) every 2 years* would be barely practical, one suspects, given current dev cycles even if you had two Fallout only teams. And yeah, at that rate it'd inevitably stagnate even more.

OTOH, it's been... 10 years since F4 now? That's way too long the other way. And as I said last time it came up; it's hard to justify having nothing tying into the success of TV series and nothing on the horizon either (except a pretty minor tie in in F76).

*There is plenty of scope to do stuff which could keep Fallout fresh even at that release rate, at least for a while- settings outside NA, having a party based game, strategy game etc. Probably don't fit well with the new approach at MS though which looks like absolute minimum risk.

29 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

*There is plenty of scope to do stuff which could keep Fallout fresh even at that release rate, at least for a while- settings outside NA, having a party based game, strategy game etc. Probably don't fit well with the new approach at MS though which looks like absolute minimum risk.

Wasn't Game Pass supposed to be about "minimizing risk" too?

Speaking of which: New Vegas 2 -- the GaaS/ Live Service Unlimited Adventure. 😍 Joking, surely they learned that lesson on that one.

Commercially, a new Fallout has the chance of being Obsidian's greatest hit now. When Vincke was shopping for IPs to capitalize on, he considered Fallout too...
Larian CEO Swen Vincke says there were only two other RPG series he was interested in working on if he couldn't get Baldur's Gate: Fallout and Ultima | PC Gamer

Don't know if I would have loved a Fallout game by Larian, but it sure as hell would have had nice turn based combat, so there's that at least...

larian character and plot does have their unique style

not sure if it will fit well with fallout or wasteland style game

the fact microsoft tolerate the incompetence of bethesda and still didn't force them to share their toy is beyond reason

Beyond reason, post Starfield for sure. If that'd sold as hoped you could justify the profligacy with TES and Fallout. As it was it didn't sell as well as expected and had a poor fan and relatively poor critical reaction. A bit of a boot up the backside is more than justified.

6 hours ago, Sven_ said:

Wasn't Game Pass supposed to be about "minimizing risk" too?

It is, really. Bringing in a moderate amount of money reliably with low overheads- and they should be low, download bandwidth is cheap as is shared MP infrastructure- is a perfect example of low risk. It should be a licence to print money; though maybe not as much money as they'd like. Kind of sums things up when 30mn subs isn't enough. That's 300mn/ month and 3.6bn p/a if everyone was on the basic plan. Each month every month, each year, every year. You'd think that would be enough, really.

The irony when it comes to risk is that, say, a 20mn Fallout strategy game would be high risk, but a 500mn Fallout RPG could be seen as lower risk. In reality, it's obvious that the higher priced one is far more risky.

(They clearly wanted a Netflix style defaultism for gamepass where people have the sub and don't seem to cancel no matter how many times the service is degraded and prices go up; and indeed sub numbers in total only ever seem to go up. For some reason, despite Netflix being, to be blunt, absolute rubbish. That approach only seems to work for Netflix, everyone else including MS tends to have a somewhat different experience where expectations of massive profits have not been realised)

I was actually looking forward to Avowed, or any other new game in the Pillers IP. But I'm not that interested in the Fallout franchise, so for me this is a huge blow. Obsidian is pretty much dead to me now as a studio whose games I look forward to. 😞

I'm not generally fussed about which IP they use unless it's one of the few I specifically dislike. I guess my greater concern is how much work will be simply thrown away now given it's not exactly a genre fit like adapting Van Buren content to New Vegas. Actually, whatever, just put the Avowed companions in Fallout 5 without modification or explanation.

cue Jefferson Rhapsody

Congratulations. XBOX managed to make “Obsidian makes Fallout” like not a good thing somehow.

it sounds risky. I am not sure Obsidian can pull of something of the scale of New Vegas without solid base to build on. And if they build something less, a new IP would bring less ire.

Sucks if Avowed2 and whatever JS is as working on before was scrapped.

Rock Paper Shotgun

New Vegas devs Obsidian are reportedly working on a new F...

Obsidian are reportedly working on a new Fallout game, following Microsoft's latest round of mass layoffs.

Outer Worlds engine? UE5?

Edited yesterday at 04:19 PM1 day by HoonDing

4 hours ago, kanisatha said:

I was actually looking forward to Avowed, or any other new game in the Pillers IP. But I'm not that interested in the Fallout franchise, so for me this is a huge blow. Obsidian is pretty much dead to me now as a studio whose games I look forward to. 😞

Have you played Pentiment? IIRC you weren't particularly fond of lots of combat, so just your kind of game. Granted, it was always set up to be a more niche experience (art style, narrative, historical focus). I still think it deserved to go a little bigger.

Btw, what's being done do id Software highlights how crazy this industry is. They didn't only make games, after all. They had one of the most experienced engine tech teams in the industry. In other words, major long-term assets. Which is something that Obsidian for instance don't have, didn't have even in the Black Isle days (without Bioware's Infinity Engine, most of their games as we know them now would have never been). Throwing all (or most) of that under the bus just figures. And that by MS -- for which gaming isn't the main business anyway. In other words, they could "afford" to keep those assets. Rather than axing them straight away.

Edited yesterday at 06:05 PM1 day by Sven_

As long as we can mod the new Fallout game we have nothing to worry about, it will be a fantastic gaming experience 👌

Hm. Obs doing another Fallout. Well, it's interesting news, if it turns out to be valid/happen. Not sure how interested I am in a possible Fallout: the Avowing (haha). I guess I'm a little dubious whether it would actually feel like a Fallout game - and I don't just mean re: Obs, but, y'know, changing times, what constitutes a "RPG" these days in style/structure/substance development (that I often don't like a lot), all of that. We shall see - could be a fantastic RPG, or more "eh." :D

But never know - hopefully it'll be best sliced bread with the creamiest butter and a dab of fave jam!

Oh and yeah - if it's fairly and easily moddable (doesn't have to be Creation-mod level) that would help. If it's not, my interest would be low.

8 hours ago, BruceVC said:

As long as we can mod the new Fallout game we have nothing to worry about

That’s the first thing that comes to mind. How would Obsidian achieve that? Borrowing Bethesda Elderscrolls6 engine would make it happen? I can’t imagine it will be if they use Unreal. And I doubt they will create their proprietary engine.

The grimmest vision I have is Microsoft having Obsidian pump out Outer Worlds-like experience with Fallout IP, without thinking what playerbase wanting a new fallout game from Obsidian actually wants and expects.

It must be so horrible for Sawyer and the other creative people at Obs right now. The two new IPs that they created with a lot of their passion and vision and talent and effort they have been ordered to kill/scrap/shelve (along with all other passion projects they may have been working on), and then they're ordered to all work on just one project that is an IP that belongs to someone else and over which thy won't have full creative control. I have to wonder if some of these people, including Sawyer himself, are contemplating just walking away from it all in disgust.