Obsidian has said it’s well aware that whenever it announces a new game, people ask where Fallout: New Vegas 2 is, but it loves how it’s been able to create new IP and even release sequels to them — and its owner Microsoft sounds like it supports that approach.
Fallout Season 2 is set to hit Prime Video this December, and while Bethesda has a new Fallout: New Vegas bundle up its sleeve, there’s no word yet on a Fallout remaster or a Fallout: New Vegas 2 to capitalize on the surge of interest in the franchise. Obsidian is of course the developer of the much-loved 2010 RPG Fallout: New Vegas, so fans often wonder whether it will return to the setting for a sequel, especially given it’s owned by Bethesda parent company Microsoft.
Obsidian, though, has focused on making brand new games, and it is prolific in doing so. It’s released Grounded (Grounded 2 came out this year), fantasy RPG Avowed (which came out this year), and sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds (The Outer Worlds 2 came out this year). Pentiment, which came out last year, was another brand new game, although I wouldn’t expect a sequel to that any time soon.
In an interview with The Game Business, Obsidian’s VP of operations Marcus Morgan and VP of production Justin Britch touched on the fan calls for a New Vegas follow-up, but pointed to its work establishing new franchises as a “joy.”
“I know everyone on the internet, on every game we ever announce, will constantly reference back to, ‘When’s the next New Vegas? Or when’s the next whatever?” Morgan said.
“But this year, in addition to it being a celebration of shipping three games, all three of those games are IP that we’ve created, that are Obsidian IP. Our history, prior to the Microsoft acquisition, really was surrounding around working on others’ IP. And this is the joy that we get of… how do we start to define our own and how do we build our own IP? And we’ve got to the part where we have sequels to all of them. All of them are sequels to the IP we created.”
And it sounds like Microsoft has supported Obsidian’s desire to do just that, even though you’d think the mega corp might have gone hard on Fallout, especially with the hugely popular Fallout TV show breaking through into the mainstream.
“Xbox has been pretty supportive of the stuff we want to do,” Britch insisted. “It’s been great.”
There was no mention made during the recent Fallout Day broadcast of a Fallout: New Vegas remaster, which some (including Danny Trejo!) have called on Bethesda to develop. Indeed, there were no new Fallout games announced at all. Find out everything announced during the Fallout Day broadcast here.
But there are all sorts of rumors floating around about potential Fallout remakes now that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is out the door (Fallout 3 Remastered was leaked back in 2023, but those plans may have changed). And we know Bethesda wants to eventually get to Fallout 5, albeit after The Elder Scrolls 6.
The last we heard on Fallout 5, by the way, was back in June 2024, when Bethesda Softworks head Todd Howard said he wasn’t interested in rushing it out the door. Howard opened up about the future of the hit post-apocalyptic RPG series during an interview with YouTube content creator MrMattyPlays.
“For other Fallout games in the future, you know, obviously I can’t talk about those right now, but I would say, sort of rushing through them, or we kind of need to get stuff out that is different than the work we’re doing in 76… we don’t feel like we need to rush any of that,” he said. “The Fallout TV show fills a certain niche in terms of the franchise and storytelling.”
The last mainline Fallout game was Fallout 4, which was released in 2015. DLC content for the entry was steadily released for PC and consoles over the next year, and in 2018, Bethesda launched its multiplayer-centered offshoot, Fallout 76. While fans flocked to the West Virginia-set open-world RPG over time (and after a rocky launch), it wasn’t until the premiere of Prime Video’s Fallout TV show that the Bethesda series leveled up in terms of attention.
Still, Howard wouldn’t budge when it came to desires for a substantial video game release. For him, it comes down to wanting to treat Bethesda’s franchises with care.
“Totally get the desire for a new kind of mainline single-player game,” he said. “And look, those things take time. I don’t think it’s bad for people to miss things. We just want to get it right and make sure that everything we’re doing in a franchise, whether it’s Elder Scrolls, Fallout, or now Starfield, that those become meaningful moments for everybody who loved these franchises as much as we do.”
In the meantime, The Outer Worlds 2 has strong New Vegas vibes. Check out IGN’s The Outer Worlds 2 review for more.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
