Bethesda first decided to make Fallout: New Vegas as a massive expansion for Fallout 3, executive producer Todd Howard said in a behind-the-scenes video celebrating the series’ 25th anniversary. Bethesda wanted to take advantage of Fallout 3’s success and keep it going for even longer, but Skyrim and practicality got in the way.
Howard said he wanted the expansion to be its own game, but there was no conceivable way for the Bethesda team to make it happen, preoccupied as they were with developing Skyrim.
Howard and the team discussed which studio they believed had the best chance of staying true to their vision for Fallout 3 and settled on Obsidian. Bethesda didn’t just give them the licenses to work on Fallout either.
Take a sip from your trusty Vault 13 canteen and settle in for another #Fallout25 retrospective. pic.twitter.com/tXCULfOVEu
— Bethesda Game Studios (@BethesdaStudios) October 24, 2022
They gave Obsidian literally everything – assets, the Fallout 3 engine, and other vital tools normally kept in-house.
Obsidian writer and director Josh Sawyer said he wanted to capture what he saw as the essence of Fallout and what made him fall in love with the series, the feeling that you were living a wasteland survival experience.
That goal inspired Obsidian to add, among other things, survival mode and the need to manage your hunger and health and is part of what the studio believes makes New Vegas so popular over a decade after its original release.
Meanwhile in the wasteland, Amazon recently released a first look at its upcoming Fallout TV show adaptation, and Bethesda has a Fallout 4 next-gen update in the works.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
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