Bethesda has made it official: Obsidian Entertainment, the studio behind 2010's Fallout: New Vegas, is working on a new game set in the Fallout universe. Franchise director Todd Howard confirmed the project as part of a broad note from Bethesda Game Studios laying out its plans for the series, and he used the moment to shut down a long-running fan theory once again.
What Howard Actually Said
Speaking to Bloomberg, Howard said "we could not be more excited to work with Obsidian again," and added that "the timing is right" for the two teams to reunite. He didn't hand over any real details about the game itself, but he was clear about who steers the ship, noting that the franchise is "managed out of here and our staff and our franchise teams" at Bethesda.
In a separate interview with Windows Central, reported by PC Gamer, Howard pushed back on the idea that Bethesda harbors any resentment toward Obsidian or New Vegas. "I appreciate some of the fan chatter, but behind the scenes, there's a huge amount of mutual respect," he said, describing the studios as "always kind of wondering if we could find a way to work together in the right way."
That message is not new. As PC Gamer points out, Howard has been denying a supposed grudge against Obsidian for years, from praising New Vegas in 2018 to calling the studio "the only choice" for a new Fallout in 2026. He even brought Obsidian developers onto the set of the Fallout TV show's second season so they could see its take on New Vegas.
The Bigger Fallout Picture
The Obsidian confirmation is one piece of Bethesda's roadmap note. The same document confirmed that Fallout 5 is in pre-production, that remasters of both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are in development, and that Fallout 4 has now sold 35 million copies. Per VGC, the note offered no release dates, gameplay footage, or screenshots for the remasters, only a promise that they exist.
Bethesda also confirmed that Creation Engine 3 will power both Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls VI, and that the Elder Scrolls Online team is being pulled closer to the TES6 group.
Layoffs Loom Over the Announcement
The upbeat roadmap arrives right after Xbox's latest round of mass layoffs. As Game Developer notes, roughly 1,600 employees were affected starting July 6, with another 1,600 reportedly to follow in the coming fiscal year. Obsidian was hit hard, losing about a quarter of its staff, and Bethesda saw cuts too, which Howard called "really tough." Labor unions in the US and Canada have taken legal action over how the company handled the cuts.
So the picture is mixed: a studio publicly celebrating a reunion project while its parent company sheds thousands of jobs. Howard's confirmation gives fans something concrete after weeks of report-driven speculation, but it stops well short of scope, setting, or timing.
What This Means for Players
If you're tracking the Fallout calendar, there's now a lot on it and almost no dates attached. The Obsidian game, Fallout 5, and the Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters are all confirmed as in progress, but none has a window, footage, or platform detail yet. Treat this as a statement of intent rather than a release schedule, and expect the remasters, given they're further along in messaging, to surface before anything new-build ships.