Bethesda is now 40-years-old, which might inspire you to reminisce about all the incredible Fallout games the developer has released, and every astounding The Elder Scrolls game it's launched, and then you start wondering – hey, what about Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls 6? What's going with those guys, since Bethesda overlord Todd Howard keeps assuring everyone the projects are well underway, though he knows it's taking a while? Bethesda now replies shhh, just buy a $160 Nuka-Girl statue instead.

The 1.72-pound sculpture now available for pre-order on the official Bethesda Gear Store is the closest thing to an anniversary gift you're getting this year. It's an uncanny replica of the Fallout franchise's Nuka-Cola mascot, a woman wearing a saran-tight, white space suit, which Bethesda proves with a close photo of the statue's butt on its product page.

"Beautifully-detailed and standing 12.8 inches (32.51 cm) tall, this collectible is sure to command a lot of attention wherever you display it," Bethesda writes in the Nuka-Girl statues item description. That's certainly an efficient way to describe why someone would want to purchase an oversized PVC statue of a lady with her butt out.

For its 40th, Bethesda has also swapped its usually muted, black-text logo for a foreboding, glowing red one it says, in a Twitter post, was "inspired by our roots." Old fans are glad to see it borrows its font from '90s-era Bethesda, and the new-old logo is printed on the 40th anniversary t-shirts the company recently added to its merch shop.

As for the pin-up Nuka-Girl, she's loyal to one corporate overlord only – "Nuka-Cola" brands the rocketship she leans against. A 13-inch version of the statue from collectibles maker Gaming Heads is similarly festooned in soda pop branding, but its standard version costs $499. If you really must quench your thirst, the official Bethesda statue offers a more affordable girl. She's no Fallout 5, but – well, yeah, she's no Fallout 5.

Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction": Bethesda breaks silence on long-awaited RPG.

Since he's the guy who created the original concept for Fallout and led the first RPG's development, it's reasonable to put some weight on what Tim Cain thinks is most interesting about the series. In a new video, he revisits an old sentiment of his that Fallout is about exploring "the ethics of a post-nuclear world."

"There's a famous quote of mine – I even looked it up because I said it once, like 25 years ago. 'My idea is to explore more of the ethics of a post-nuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun,'" Cain says in a new YouTube video. That quote, in fact, dates back to a 2002 chat with Fallout fansite Duck and Cover, published when the original Fallout 3 – which is better known as Van Buren, and which Cain was not directly involved with – was still in development.

The older, crankier portions of the Fallout fanbase have regularly revisited that quote as a way to dunk on the Bethesda era of the series, but Cain himself is more interested in using it to explain why he likes post-apocalyptic settings so much.

"People have trotted that out for all kinds of things they want to support," he explains, "but what I was saying there is the ultimate reason I liked [the post-apocalypse] and why I liked making Fallout was this absence of authority, allowing you to explore morality. It wasn't so we could make cool plasma weapons and power armor and all that – although that's cool. But that wasn't the reason. If Fallout's a cake, that stuff is the icing."

The gooey cake at the heart of Fallout is, instead, "that gray morality stuff," Cain argues. "You will run around the world and you see some people trying to do good and rebuild civilization. You will find other people being really bad and killing people and raiding settlements and saying, 'We're just trying to survive.' Sometimes they're not even pretending to do that. They're bad. They know it. They don't care. They don't want to work."

That's the world as it exists in the game, "but to the player," Cain says, "I've always wanted the game to ask, 'What will you do? Okay, here you are, blank slate player. What are you going to do? How are you going to behave when no one tells you what to do? Are you going to be a good person or are you going to be a bad person?'"

While Cain says "I love the Ultima series," one of the cornerstones of RPG design, those games "expect you to be good. Fallout has no such expectation. It's an entirely different kind of game." The post-apocalyptic setting offers a world without any kind of moral authority – whether legal, cultural, or religious – and lets you make your choices as you will.

That impetus to let players do what they want is why Fallout has a series of slides at the end showing the consequences of your actions over the course of the game. "We created them and put them in because, when the game ended, we wanted the player to know we watched you," Cain says. "The designers anticipated some of the horrific stuff you did, and here are some slides explaining all the horrible stuff that resulted from your actions. And good stuff, but also bad stuff."

For Cain, that lack of moral judgment is essential. "I love gray morality," he concludes. "I love it. It makes people self-reflect. Something a lot of people don't do. I mean, just look at politics or online. I love that about the game. It also makes people want to replay, which is a big part of Fallout. Replay, make a new character, act differently."

Certainly, our list of the best Fallout games can generate no controversy.

Bethesda has rumbled back to life. Nearly three years after Starfield and with The Elder Scrolls 6 nowhere in sight, the positive reception to the announcement of the Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters is hardly surprising. With the help of Obsidian, between 2008 and 2011 Bethesda cemented itself as the rightful king of the open-world RPG, Fallout 3 and Skyrim bookending the kind of development run we'll probably never see again.

A long-awaited return to the Capitol and Mojave Wastelands is welcome, but while these remasters aren't quite too little, too late, they serve as a reminder of just how neglected one of the biggest and best RPG series has become.

This November will mark 11 years since Fallout 4, with Fallout 76's eighth anniversary falling just a couple of weeks before. And until last week, there was nothing to suggest another game was anywhere close to the horizon – based on Bethesda's previous release cadence, 2033 was a solid guess for a potential Fallout 5 release year. That's not far short of two full decades since the series' last traditional, single-player RPG launch – an unforgivable drought for a series that has over the past few years, been transformed into a mainstream, global franchise thanks to the critically-acclaimed Amazon Prime series.

In the last week, admittedly, the Fallout slate has filled up significantly. First up will be next year's "prequel story to Fallout 3" heading to Fallout 76. The Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas remasters seem likely to follow relatively soon after, potentially positioned around Fallout season 3 and the Fallout Shelter show. Fallout 5 is officially in pre-production, but could easily follow as many as five years after Elder Scrolls 6, which still feels a long way off. Obsidian's new Fallout project seems likely to plug that inter-franchise gap – perhaps some time in 2029 or the early 2030s.

Kick in the head

It's that last project that's currently most mysterious, but also the clearest indication of what Fallout and Xbox actually need: help from the wider ecosystem. Xbox and Zenimax are full of studios that could have, over the six years since the acquisition, been running wild in the franchise playgrounds that are currently open only to Bethesda. Clearly, the kind of AAA, open-world RPG that Todd Howard wants to make takes many years to complete, but I see no reason why no other studio has been allowed to do more than sniff in the direction of the Fallout and TES brands.

The possibilities are huge; a stealthy, Dark Brotherhood immersive sim made by Arkane Austin instead of shuttering it after Redfall; a Ghoul-led game using the State of Decay tech from Undead Labs, which just got sold off; an Age of Empires conversion from World's Edge, which has been diligently plugging away on DLC and remasters for that franchise. Xbox's affinity for beefy guys with guns across the Gears, Doom, and Halo series could have led to an amazing power armor shooter. There are certainly studios whose work doesn't mesh with Bethesda's oeuvre so neatly, but within the Xbox ecosystem, they're surprisingly few and far between. And all that is to say nothing of Obsidian, a studio that not only made one of the best Fallout games, but eventually took its fate into its own hands and made Avowed and The Outer Worlds as its own answers to The Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

That none of those studios have been given a Bethesda license is a mistake, but it's a mistake compounded by the fact that Bethesda isn't equipped to handle them at the pace that should be required. Its two most important IPs have been left to languish for more than a decade. Starfield is a primary cause for that, but so is Bethesda's size. The studio has remained deliberately small by the standards of a major studio, and at about 450 staff isn't capable of being a two-game studio, especially since switching between three different franchises means it can't pull off the kind of juggling act that the similarly-sized Insomniac - which has launched a whole suite of Marvel games over the time since Fallout 76 – has been able to achieve.

A hit of Jet

It's likely that the Fallout release cadence will pick up now. The remasters are the start of that process, and the Obsidian game and Fallout 76 expansion will help. But while Xbox's recent deluge of lay-offs have hit hard, the fact still stands that the publisher is sitting pretty on some of the industry's highest profile RPG brands and what remains of the studios that created them. With only the likes of CD Projekt Red as major competition, the question is whether new Xbox chief Asha Sharma will be able to do what predecessor Phil Spencer couldn't, even as the company haemorrhages staff. If CDPR is able to push out three major RPGs in quick succession, could the much larger Xbox be in a position to follow suit instead of squandering the opportunity? Or, is such a massive entity prone to slow manoeuvring, like trying to turn a Brotherhood of Steel zeppelin?

But, whether or not that all comes to pass, it doesn't change the fact that as a gaming series Fallout has been left behind by its creators for far too long, and no number of remasters will help speed up the ongoing wait for its next major iteration, especially as the years tick on.

The Elder Scrolls Online is struggling with "team bandwidth" after Xbox layoffs hit Bethesda and ZeniMax, leading devs to limit a store for in-game items.

Fallout 3 designer Bruce Nesmith previously shared his hopes that a remaster of the game would make the combat better than it was in 2008.

Last week, Bethesda dropped a load of info about its post-apocalyptic RPG series: Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction," New Vegas developer Obsidian is returning to the series for a new entry, and Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are both getting remasters.

Granted, this felt a bit like jingling keys to distract from Microsoft's massive wave of layoffs – something one workers' union has already called out – but it's naturally a very exciting prospect to fans.

Speaking to FRVR around the time The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered released in 2025, Nesmith shared his thoughts about a potential remaster of Fallout 3, admitting that the gunplay in the 2008 RPG is "not good."

"It didn’t hold up to shooters at the time," he explained, "a lot of work was done on that for Fallout 4."

And it's true, Fallout 4 did feel more akin to what would be a traditional first-person shooter of that era, making it so players didn't have to rely on the V.A.T.S. quite as much.

"I anticipate seeing a lot of that work [we did with Fallout 4] go into it [Fallout 3 Remastered]," Nesmith explained. And granted, Oblivion Remastered did make some changes to the combat compared to the 2006 original, namely giving new movesets to the melee weapons. So perhaps Bethesda will end up making the shooting in Fallout 3 (and New Vegas) feel more like Fallout 4.

Modders remastering Fallout 3 in Fallout 4 are not bothered by Bethesda's official version: "Our project has been a community-driven passion project for almost a full decade"

A group of Fallout 4 modders who call themselves the Fallout 4: Capital Wasteland Team have released a statement saying that they intend to continue work on their mod, which aims to rebuild Fallout 3 inside Fallout 4, despite Bethesda announcing that Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters are in development.

In a statement released on Twitter, the team says that while they are excited for the upcoming remasters, the Capital Wasteland mod will continue development and the project is completely separate from Bethesda Game Studios and its work.

"The F4CW Team is incredibly excited to see Fallout 3 officially receiving a remaster and we can't wait to see what they have in store," the statement begins. "That said, we'd also like to reassure our community that F4CW is continuing development. Our project has been a community-driven passion project for almost a full decade now, and we're committed to seeing that our work, creativity and dedication continue!"

The modding team is consists of dozens of contributors, and progress is very slow. It is very likely that, despite 10 years of development time invested in the mod, the official Bethesda games will launch before the full project is complete. However, from previously released updates it appears that Capital Wasteland is something very different from a typical remaster anyway.

Fallout: New Vegas director says RPGs should be messy and force players to make hard decisions: "No person can fix everything"

I was a late bloomer to Fallout. I saw it aplenty in the magazines during the late 1990s, but it wasn't until a year after Fallout 3's 2008 release that I loaded it into my PlayStation 3 console, and it became my late Game of the Year. Playing a title that was a mix of first-person shooter and RPG genres was a new feeling for me; the feeling of awe was something I hadn't felt since I first played Half-Life in 2000.

Like all my favorite games, I purposely stop playing them for a long while to maintain that feeling of surprise and joy each time I return. Metal Gear Solid 2, Half-Life 2, and Tomb Raider are a few of these titles for me, and Fallout 3 quickly joined their ranks. But as the years passed, it became harder to play the game. I didn't own an Xbox, and my PC was out of action. Thanks to Crossover, a macOS app that lets me play a bunch of Windows games on my Mac, I can play Fallout 3 again – but as a day one Switch 2 owner, I've been dying to play it on my new Nintendo console. That dream might actually become a reality now that a Fallout 3 remaster has been officially confirmed by Bethesda.

New Nuka Cola, but with a Switch 2 taste

I've loved owning a Switch 2 since its June 2025 launch. The previous model was also a day-one buy, and could always be found in my backpack. The same applies to the latest console. Now I can play my existing games with a glossier finish, as well as new games that couldn't run on the original Switch.

But while it's been fun to play Street Fighter 6, Kirby Air Riders, and plenty of the other best Switch 2 games out there already, I'm dying to know whether the Fallout 3 remaster will make the jump. I know I could wait for Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition, which is already confirmed for Switch 2. But I've always preferred the third entry to to 2015's Fallout 4 due to the graphics and the RPG elements and will accept no substitute.

It's July 2026, more than a year on since the Switch 2 debuted, and up until Bethesda revealed the official remaster alongside an update on Fallout 5, I'd been wondering why Nintendo hadn't delivered its own Fallout 3 port yet. Now that the remaster is officially in the works, there's little need for a Switch 2 port – if the Fallout 3 remaster launches on the console at all, that is. I hope it does; it would be a match made in radioactive heaven.

Liberty Prime with an extra shine

If the Fallout 3 remaster did make its way to Switch 2, I'd love to see features like less loading times, more NPCs across the open wasteland, and, as a treat, a redesigned inventory system that uses the Switch 2's touchscreen.

Combining it with a fresh coat of paint that’s similar to The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered could be a great way to lessen one of the few pain points I've always had with Fallout 3. I've found the method of arranging every bit of loot to be a cumbersome process. But just having it ready to play on-the-go via my Nintendo handheld, regardless of having that option available now via Steam Deck, sounds incredibly enticing to me.

With the sim-spinoff Fallout Shelter having been available on Nintendo Switch consoles since 2018, Fallout 3 seems primed for the platform. We're in an era where there's a Fallout TV series as well, which still feels surreal. It's really good, too, and with its second season having wrapped up in early February, it feels like the stars are aligning for the Fallout 3 remaster to come to Switch 2.

As I'm reaching the four-year mark since I last played Fallout 3, I'd love to go back into the world again on my Switch 2 instead of having to carry my Mac around for the pleasure. By all means, I'd do it anyway. But to help my back and my Mac's battery life, it'd be great if Bethesda sees my plight and adds it to the voices. It's time for Fallout 3 to join the Switch 2 party – I'll bring the Nuka-Cola.

Check out the best Fallout games of all time, from spinoffs to mainline entries.

As some fans are filled with dread following Bethesda's confirmation that both The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 are being developed using the shiny new Creation Engine 3, words from New Vegas lead Josh Sawyer from six years ago might provide some reassurance.

Since Bethesda's flurry of news last week about its upcoming projects, there have been many concerns raised about the studio using Creation Engine 3 – an updated version of its proprietary engine – for the two biggest RPGs on its slate. Fans worry about bugs and the devs potentially prioritizing modders over the games themselves, but according to Sawyer in 2020 that's now doing the online rounds, it's actually a very easy engine to work with.

During an old stream of Fallout: New Vegas (below), Sawyer was asked if he had "a hard time" developing New Vegas thanks to Fallout 3's "buggy engine," to which he was quick to respond: "No, not at all."

He continued: "I will criticize other stuff in Fallout 3 and 4, [but] this engine is incredibly easy to make content for. Look into my eyes – without GECK [New Vegas' official editor and modding tool] and without the pipeline of this engine, we never would have finished this game in 18 months."

Sawyer reiterated that "this is the best content creation pipeline of any game that I've ever worked on, easily," but that doesn't mean it's without its issues. "It's buggy, you're right, it's very buggy. It's buggy and unstable and it's frustrating, but it's incredibly easy to make content for. Like, no one's gonna sit here and say, like, 'No it's not that buggy.' Like, yeah, it's pretty buggy, but it's fine. Like, that's a trade-off."

He went on to talk about the GECK tool, too, calling it "fast" and saying that "searching is super easy, finding references to things is super easy, scripting is very powerful," and that "iteration loops are super fast." All that made it "awesome."

In fact, Sawyer said that "the only shortcoming of the tools was the dialogue tool." He explained: "We built our own dialogue tool to sit on top of that, and that was fine. Like, it took a little bit of investment for us, but that was it."

Looking back about what Sawyer had to say about the ease of Creation Engine and how quickly things could be made with it, I can't help but wonder if that might be on Bethesda's mind today. After all, last month, it was reported that Xbox is apparently pushing for faster development on The Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises – something which might prove even more difficult now that a number of Bethesda staff have been laid off.

Needless to say, if a familiar-feeling, easy-to-use engine can help facilitate the demand for more games, it's little wonder that that's the one that's been chosen.

16 years after Fallout: New Vegas, Obsidian is returning to the post-apocalyptic RPG series and Todd Howard "could not be more excited."

Todd Howard warns he is no longer thinking of retiring, he will persist until the end of days, asking you to buy Skyrim - and to release a few more games, we imagine.

Todd Howard has been at Bethesda Game Studios since 1994, when it was creating Terminator games, making a massive splash on the studio's popularity after taking on the director's role for The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, the game that established the Bethesda RPG for years to come.

Since then, he's directed Fallout 3, 4, Skyrim, and Starfield. And while he's only in his mid-50's now, by the time his Game Director roles on The Elder Scrolls 6 and presumably Fallout 5 come to an end, he'll likely be nearing retirement age.

Speaking to Jason Schreier, Howard is asked about his eventual retirement and says, "The truth is there was a period of time a while back where I pondered what does it look like? Not is it imminent, but what does it look like? And I no longer do."

He explains, "I see the work we're doing. I just love it. I love working with these people. It's really not something I think about."

Howard adds, "Some folks in our industry that are a little older than me, they're just making great stuff, too. So, it's not something I've been thinking about."

One such name who is a "little older" is Hideo Kojima, who on his 60th birthday just under three years ago said he has no plans to retire, and wishes to create things for the rest of his life. But worry not for now, Todd Howard will be around to sell you copies of Skyrim on PS6 and Xbox Project Helix.

Elder Scrolls and Fallout boss Todd Howard says "you'd be surprised how many great ideas I get" from Reddit.

Bethesda Game Studios boss Todd Howard has revealed he's constantly lurking on Reddit and claims the team is consistently taking that feedback on board.

In a thread on r/Games, Howard chimed in with his first Reddit post since the launch of Starfield – well aside from reacting to one post six months ago that modded a cardboard cutout of him into Fallout 4 as the immortal snail – saying "Hey Reddit. I’m a professional lurker and read your comments all the time."

And given Reddit's reactions to Bethesda games at times – just look at any New Vegas thread – this may have sounded vaguely threatening, but Howard adds, "Many here do and we deeply appreciate all the passion for our work."

The thread in question was the post from Bethesda outlining the future of the studio. This post included news about how Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction," Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are both getting remasters, Obsidian is making a new Fallout game, and an update on the production of The Elder Scrolls 6. Howard explains, "Today’s info was an attempt at changing that and letting everyone know what we’ve been working on the past several years, and a look at what’s coming. So know we’re constantly listening and keep telling us how to be even better."

Howard also added, "You’d be surprised how many great ideas I get from Reddit. So upvote your favorite and we’ll do it. Maybe."

Unsurprisingly, fans really want Oblivion Remastered to be fixed after a year. One user says, "Please get Virtuous to keep patching Oblivion and give it as much love as you guys gave Skyrim, because it feels abandoned right now, which is a shame."

Meanwhile, another has fears that the upcoming Fallout remasters will share a similar fate, saying, "Pay Virtuous whatever amount needed for the remasters to function well."

Only 16 Fallout: New Vegas developers still work at Obsidian, says RPG's original writer.

Bethesda unceremoniously dropped a cache of news about its upcoming games today as the wait for The Elder Scrolls 6 drags ever closer to 10 years. In a lengthy Twitter post, we learned that Fallout 5 is in pre-production, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters are in the works, and buried in the middle of the reveal blitz is the next Fallout 76 expansion, titled Raven Rock.

"Fallout 76 continues to be home to millions of players exploring Appalachia together," reads Bethesda's announcement. "With nearly 70 free updates released to date, the journey is far from over.

"In fact, we have a major Fallout 76 expansion planned for next year: Raven Rock, a prequel story to Fallout 3."

Unironically, this is one of the most exciting new Bethesda announcements in a long while. The Fallout 76 team has proven itself capable of telling compelling stories at the scale of mainline Fallout games with substantial narrative expansions like Steel Dawn and Steel Reign, which together tell one of my favorite interpretations of the Brotherhood of any game in the series. I'm thrilled about the potential to see the same development team explore that faction even further in a Fallout 3 prequel story.

We also have a writeup on everything that was announced about the future of Fallout as well as The Elder Scrolls, which is all relatively exciting if you can get past the stink of Xbox's recent layoff bloodbath, which definitely impacted Bethesda proper as well as many other Xbox studios. For what it's worth, the labor union representing Bethesda Game Studios employees in the US and Canada suggested in the wake of the company's announcements that it was simply a distraction from the bad news, and that fans would do well not to "fall for it."

Bethesda says The Elder Scrolls 6 is going great, actually: "We're where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day"

Behold, the terrifying march of time: Skyrim came out in 2011 and Fallout 4 launched in 2015, yet both games still bookend their respective series. Bethesda hasn't released a new mainline installment for its two best-known RPG series in over a decade, and Starfield didn't scratch quite the same itch for many.

So, today's motherlode of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls news, unceremoniously dropped online this morning, was a welcome release from years of waiting, rumors, silence, and more waiting. Here's a one-stop look at everything Bethesda revealed today, on the heels of layoffs that have cost the studio several design veterans from these series. (Bethesda boss Todd Howard called the layoffs a "really tough" part of a "change" to the studio.)

Fallout 5 is in pre-production, which could mean anything from a small group of developers putting white boards through the ringer to ideas on a napkin in Todd Howard's desk. Bethesda's active development priority is The Elder Scrolls 6, which, the studio says, is going well despite having nothing to show eight years after that notorious announcement teaser.

Both of these games use Creation Engine 3, the latest evolution of the game-making software, tools, and resources that have come to define Bethesda's style.

Remasters of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are in the works, though we don't know who's making them or when they'll arrive. Original New Vegas developer Obsidian has returned to partner closely with Bethesda on the Fallout series, but its project is equally unknown. The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered was notably in the hands of third-party dev Virtuous.

Similarly, Zenimax Online Studios will work more closely with Bethesda proper even as it continues support for The Elder Scrolls Online, which sounds difficult given its more severe layoffs.

Fallout 76's 2027 expansion, Raven Rock, will act as a "prequel story" to Fallout 3. Mobile hit Fallout Shelter is on track for more seasonal updates after reaching over 250 million players, and is also the focus of an "unscripted" TV project in the works at Amazon Studios and Kilter Films. Work on Fallout season 3, the next chapter of the hit TV show, continues apace.

According to Bethesda's latest figures, Fallout 4 has sold 35 million copies and Skyrim has passed 65 million, putting the studio's latest high-profile releases at a combined 100 million copies sold, which somehow makes this decade-and-change of non-news feel even more surreal.

Starfield, meanwhile, has seen over 17 million players, and is entering Year 3 of post-launch support with plans for further gameplay refinements, additional stories, and future Starborn content.

"Across Bethesda Game Studios, we're building for the future of Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Starfield," the studio's announcement concludes. "We're investing in our technology, bringing teams closer together, supporting our live games, expanding into new forms of entertainment, and developing the next generation of Bethesda RPGs."

And yes, the real announcement is, ultimately, more waiting.

"Don't fall for it": Union says Fallout 5 and Elder Scrolls 6 news shouldn't distract you from huge Bethesda layoffs as Xbox CEO praises the series' "remarkable" achievements

Bethesda just announced a whole lot of news about the future of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, and if you find the timing of it all a bit suspicious, you're not alone. United Videogame Workers-CWA says the announcement is an "intentional" distraction from the layoffs happening at Bethesda.

"The timing of this kind of press is intentional," UVW-CWA says in a Bluesky post. "How are they going to make these games when Bethesda and Obsidian collectively laid off hundreds? Don’t fall for it."

UVW-CWA is a direct-join union representing game workers across the industry, but it does not represent any one specific workplace. The CWA part of the name is for the Communications Workers of America, which supports several workplace unions at various Microsoft-owned game studios, including Bethesda.

The timing of this kind of press is intentional. How are they going to make these games when Bethesda and Obsidian collectively laid off hundreds? Don’t fall for it.

— @videogameworkers.bsky.social (@videogameworkers.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-07-17T20:21:37.854Z

Employees across Microsoft's gaming divisions staged protests last week in support of those affected by the Xbox layoffs. Game Developer reports that unions are also taking legal action against Microsoft.

According to CWA Canada president Carmel Smyth, "The unions CWA and CWA Canada have jointly filed unfair labor practice complaints against Microsoft alleging the company has unlawfully fired people without giving notice to or discussing it with the union as the employer is legally obliged to do when we are in the middle of ongoing bargaining [for] a collective agreement."

For her part, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is celebrating the historic success of Bethesda's various franchises on Twitter. "The achievements of these franchises are remarkable: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has crossed 65 million units sold, becoming one of the 10 best-selling games of all time, Fallout 4 has also crossed 35 million units sold, joining the top 25, and Starfield will soon reach over 1 billion hours played," she says.

But at a certain point, you have to start asking whether the developers who actually made those games have actually seen the fruits of their success. Certainly, they're not getting royalties – come on, this is the video game industry – but many aren't even getting to enjoy continued employment. We've only gotten anecdotal details on individuals who have been laid off, but we know their numbers include Christiane Meister, a 27-year veteran of everything from Morrowind to Fallout 4, and Dane Olds, a 20-year vet with a similar list of credits.

But hey, Fallout 5 is coming! And The Elder Scrolls 6! And Obsidian's making a new Fallout game of its own, finally – never mind the reports that Microsoft canceled the studio's Avowed follow-up in order to have it build something for the far more popular franchise. I'm certain that the developers who remain at these studios are putting their all into their work, but it's tough to see today's announcement as much more than Microsoft's attempt at jingling keys in front of the eyes of gamers who've grown increasingly exhausted of the industry's most cynical business practices.

Todd Howard says layoffs at Bethesda were "really tough": "We're going through a change so that we focus best on the franchises."

As Bethesda announces what's going on with the future of the studio, director and producer Todd Howard has acknowledged the layoffs that have hit the studio as part of Microsoft's latest batch of staff cuts.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Howard calls the cuts at Bethesda Game Studios "really tough" for him and his colleagues. This latest round of cuts saw staff at the studio laid off as part of Xbox's seemingly now-yearly mass layoffs – including 18-year veterans of the company like Ray Lederer. Bethesda as a whole also got hit hard as we also saw fellow ZeniMax Studios id Software and ZeniMax Online Studios face heavy cuts.

Howard adds, "This is Bethesda's 40th anniversary, and there have been periods where we've gone through changes," referring to a portion of the 1990s where the studio was on the brink. But now, he says, "We're going through a change so that we focus best on the franchises and what we need to do to deliver for everybody."

Word over the last week is that Xbox has been pushing Bethesda to focus on marquee titles with Bethesda Game Studios on The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5, while the wider ZeniMax studios work on Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein.

Howard also spoke about his personal feelings on the layoffs with Windows Central, saying "I've been doing this a long time, whenever you've worked with people for, in some cases, many decades, and they're no longer here, that's really personally very difficult, and difficult for our teams."

These interviews have come alongside word that Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction," that Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are both getting remasters, and that Obsidian is returning to the post-apocalyptic RPG series for a new entry. But with layoffs across Bethesda and Obsidian, as one workers union has already suggested, it's hard not to see this as Microsoft trying to change the subject.

Video game fans are currently quite unhappy with everything going on at Xbox, with thousands of developers losing their jobs, and calling into question how these diminished numbers will affect development going forward. So a big blowout of every Fallout project everyone wants to know about – with nothing to actually show from them – arguably feels more like an attempt at a distraction or reassurance, rather than it being the right time to drop this news.

It's official: Obsidian is returning to the Fallout series. 16 years after the launch of the beloved Fallout: New Vegas, the venerable RPG studio is returning to the post-apocalypse for a new entry that appears to be entirely separate from Fallout 5. You can count Todd Howard himself among those excited about the news.

"The wasteland continues to expand as we team up once again with our longtime friends at Obsidian Entertainment," Bethesda says in its announcement about the future of Fallout. "We're happy to confirm they're working with us on a new Fallout project. We'll have more to share in the future."

"We could not be more excited to work with Obsidian again," as Bethesda boss Todd Howard tells Bloomberg. Bethesda's level of input into Obsidian's game also isn't clear, but he says "the Fallout franchise is managed out of here and our staff and our franchise teams."

Howard doesn't offer much concrete detail on what Obsidian's game will look like, but believes the "timing is right" for the project to get started. Bloomberg previously reported that Obsidian was working on an Avowed sequel which Microsoft canceled to make room for this new Fallout project.

As part of this news blast, Bethesda also confirmed that Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction," and will presumably be released some time after The Elder Scrolls 6. The long-rumored remasters of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas were also finally confirmed, so if you're looking for an excuse to learn why these titles are ranked so highly among the best Fallout games, you're about to find one.

Only 16 Fallout: New Vegas developers still work at Obsidian, says RPG's original writer.

After seemingly endless amounts of speculation and rumours, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters have been officially announced by Bethesda.

This happened in a Twitter post where Bethesda Game Studios acknowledged the future of the studio following Microsoft's latest massive wave of layoffs – including the future of its big three: Starfield, The Elder Scrolls, and Fallout. While Starfield got some more proof of life and Elder Scrolls got a pretty simple "we're working on it," Fallout fans are eating right now.

Not only has Bethesda outlined the future of Fallout by confirming that Fallout 5 is in pre-production, and that the rumours are true and it will be working with Obsidian Entertainment on a new Fallout game, but the past of the series is also getting some love as Bethesda finally confirms those remasters are happening.

"We also know many players want to revisit previous Fallout experiences." Bethesda says, adding: "While we're not announcing any dates today, we have been working on remasters for both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas."

This duo of remasters has been heavily requested and heavily rumored since the release of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered in 2025, and while it's not exactly been a massive secret, this is the first time Bethesda has outright mentioned it's happening. Fallout 3 was first released back in 2008 and marked Bethesda's first outing with the franchise, while New Vegas was helmed by Obsidian Entertainment – a studio at the time filled with ex-Fallout 1 and 2 staffers – and is widely considered the greatest game in the franchise.

Only 16 Fallout: New Vegas developers still work at Obsidian, says RPG's original writer.

Fallout 5 is in preproduction at Bethesda as the studio prioritizes The Elder Scrolls 6.

Bethesda broke its silence today, releasing a lengthy look at the studio's pipeline and the plans for its biggest franchises. Fallout is a key focus, with Fallout 5 essentially simmering in the background.

"Our teams are now developing The Elder Scrolls VI and Fallout 5 on Creation Engine 3, a shared technology platform we've been building since Starfield's launch," Bethesda explains. "It allows our teams to support multiple projects simultaneously with new tools, rendering, and systems that define our games.

"Fallout 5 is currently in preproduction. The Elder Scrolls VI is our primary development focus today, with the majority of our team currently working on the next chapter of the franchise."

The Creation Engine 3 suite "extends beyond our teams to the technology, tools, and systems that will power the next generation of Bethesda RPGs," the studio adds.

Though the next mainline installment is years away, Bethesda stresses that "Fallout is one of our biggest priorities today. Fallout 5 remains our long-range destination, and we have multiple Fallout projects in active development right now."

This suite of projects includes remasters for both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, though Bethesda is "not announcing any dates today."

Partially confirming reports, Bethesda says original Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian Entertainment is once again working on the franchise, though it doesn't give specifics beyond "a new Fallout project." Other reports claimed a different Fallout RPG had been in development at Obsidian before Bethesda axed it a while ago, forcing it to be similar to Fallout but not connected to the IP.

The live Fallout games, Fallout 76 and Fallout Shelter, will continue to receive new content as well. A new Fallout 76 expansion, Raven Rock, is coming in 2027 and described as "a prequel story to Fallout 3." New seasonal content awaits Fallout Shelter players, not to mention "an unscripted Fallout Shelter television project is also in the works with our partners at Amazon Studios and Kilter Films."

This flurry of announcements follows quiet years for Bethesda – its biggest franchises have gone untouched in-house for more than a decade – and a recent wave of layoffs that hit the studio as part of wide-reaching cuts ordered by Xbox.

In today's statement, Bethesda says its constellation of studios is "investing in our technology, bringing teams closer together, supporting our live games, expanding into new forms of entertainment, and developing the next generation of Bethesda RPGs."

Bethesda says The Elder Scrolls 6 is going great, actually: "We're where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day."

Xbox subsidiary Obsidian got butchered along with most of the parent company's children during mass layoffs earlier this month, making the original Fallout: New Vegas team even more scarce. New Vegas writer Chris Avellone did the math, and it looks like only 16 of Fallout: New Vegas' total 73 developers still work at Obsidian.

"Some of the ex-NV developers were among those laid off last week, unfortunately," Avellone explains in a July 14 Twitter post on the topic. 21-year veteran art director Dan Alpert was impacted, as was animator Shon Stewart, and assistant art director Paul Fish. "Shon in particular was a big surprise when I heard about it," says Avellone, "he's a great animator."

But many New Vegas developers had already been long gone from Obsidian. Character artist Kevin Manning has spent the last seven years at Riot Games, for example, junior artist Megan Morse hasn't worked at Obsidian since 2012 and is currently an artist at Exodus studio Archetype, and Avellone himself left Obsidian – which he co-founded – in 2015. He's currently fiddling with secret "other projects, including RPGs," he says on Twitter.

Obsidian is now toiling over a new Fallout game – which may or may not be the new Fallout game we already knew about, Fallout 5 – after Xbox canceled its planned sequel to 2025 action-RPG Avowed. So while it isn't exactly thrilling news that only 20% of Fallout: New Vegas developers have jobs at Obsidian after 16 years of layoffs, game cancellations, new opportunities, and plain, old life, it's not a big surprise to me, either.

Fallout co-creator Tim Cain returned to Obsidian in 2025 for an unrevealed project, and co-creator Leonard Boyarsky has spent the last decade at Obsidian. This doesn't satisfy the people on Twitter who begged Avellone for his Obsidian stats to begin with, but so little does.

"I wasn't sure about a few people on the list, so this may get revised," Avellone adds on Twitter. "Still, better than nothing and a lot better than yelling back and forth."

Fallout: New Vegas writer says he feels "embarrassed" by some of the Fallout TV show dialogue, but has no notes for "really cool" Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.

Unlike, say, Mass Effect or Fable, you won't find any outright, objectively good endings in Fallout: New Vegas. There are more morally justifiable outcomes, but none that are straight ahead bright and optimistic. But the RPG's director, Josh Sawyer, nonetheless has a preferred conclusion – based on power dynamics.

"I mean, some people would say like, 'I love Caesar,' and great, but it's kind of hard to hand everything over to an individual like Caesar or Mr. House," he tells The Examined Game. "It feels dangerous. And then with [New California Republic], you just realize like, man, they've got a lot of problems. Like, they have a lot of problems right now. They're doing things for a lot of very questionable reasons."

The NCR is a nebulous faction, within which you may find people who are using its resources and reach to build a better tomorrow for the Mojave. But Sawyer argues, "it's difficult to wrestle with that and come away and say like, yeah, I think NCR is great."

Thus, he thinks the most worthwhile Fallout: New Vegas outcome is to give New Vegas itself the independence it so desires. "I know it's going to be dysfunctional, I know it's going to be bureaucratic, I know there's going to be corruption, but also it hasn't been tried yet, right?" Sawyer muses. "Like we haven't organized this yet, so let's give it a try."

I won't argue, given how many political situations the real world is in where it seems like any sort of alternative would be an improvement to what's happening. Plus, a running theme of Fallout is how different factions are all perpetuating the same tribalism and constant desire for power. Going for an independent New Vegas ending breaks the region out of that back-and-forth.

It's not a conclusion I've personally gotten in any of my New Vegas playthroughs... mostly because I've only played to credits once. Usually, I like to play New Vegas just to disappear into the wasteland, pretending I'm in Mad Max and going where I'm needed.

If only there was a remaster of Fallout: New Vegas coming, so others and I could have an easy opportunity to experience New Vegas' ending as Sawyer most likes. One can dream, eh?

Fallout: New Vegas level scaling is designed to teach players that "this is not actually Fallout 3," Josh Sawyer says: "You're going to get your ass handed to you if you're not careful."

Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer says Obsidian took a different approach to level scaling than Bethesda did with Fallout 3 to teach players that "things work a little differently" here, and that "you're going to get your ass handed to you if you're not careful."

Speaking to The 41st Precinct in a video interview you can check out below, Sawyer talks about going back to the OG Fallout when designing a new spin of his own on the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

More specifically, Sawyer loved that the critical path of Fallout 1 "is very open." If you really want to and know where to go, you can waltz right to the late game areas and skip a big ol' chunk of the story. Funnily enough, Sawyer also says that one of Fallout's co-creators, Tim Cain, told him that's down to a bug, but hey, everyone enjoys it enough so it's a feature now.

And a good thing it is, as it made quite the impression on Sawyer.

"I loved how open it was, and so, with New Vegas, I was like, 'I want to get that feeling back where we have difficulty gates,' so we took some of the level scaling out," he says. "It's a much more compressed level scaling range. That's why if you go to Quarry Junction, a Death Claw will just chop your head off. It's to teach the player, 'hey, this is not actually Fallout 3. Things work a little differently. You're going to get your ass handed to you if you're not careful.'"

To bring things to their most basic terms, enemies in Fallout 3 will increase in level and use better equipment to match your level. Return to an earlier locale in the late game and it'll be a nastier place than you remember.

Fallout: New Vegas enemies can certainly get meaner themselves, but only to a point. As such, you don't have to worry about Goodsprings turning into an endgame area if you return at a much later point. It does mean, though, that some of Fallout: New Vegas's areas will punch you in the face if you're not equipped. Think of it as a suggestion that you probably shouldn't be here until you level up. Once you do, though, you'll be able to steamroll foes in a way that isn't typically doable in Fallout 3.

Sawyer goes on to say that this approach to game design meant Obsidian could offer the player the chance to follow Fallout: New Vegas's story, as in Fallout, by skipping parts – albeit with the added challenge of surviving nastier areas.

"What that meant is that we could make the story – you can find Benny immediately," he says. "Like, you can go from Goodsprings straight to Benny. And that's the Water Chip. The design of that is you follow an information trail. I'm looking for this guy, I go here, he's not here but he says go here, go here, go here. But at any time, you can shortcut that. You can go through Scorpion Gulch and you can get to Novak and talk to Manny and then go to Boulder City. Or you can go straight to The Tops if you can figure out a way to get there. So, yeah, I was trying to embody that open spirit of Fallout 1."

I'd say Sawyer and Obsidian's approach to Fallout certainly landed, which is why New Vegas is so fondly remembered even today. It makes the future interesting, too, as Microsoft is reportedly kicking around plans to get Sawyer to head up another Fallout game to capitalize on the success of the TV show, especially as Bethesda won't be getting to that for a long time thanks to The Elder Scrolls 6. According to one former Obsidian lead, there was another Sawyer-led Fallout RPG in the works that ultimately got kiboshed, so it might not be the first time such a project nearly came to fruition. Maybe this time such a thing will stick and see the light of day.

Microsoft lays off Bethesda vet behind Todd Howard's "crazy" Fallout 4 idea, "too many Skyrim weapons to count," the Dwemer, and Mudcrabs – and he may leave games altogether.

Xbox studios are hemorrhaging generational talent amid Microsoft's layoff wave, with one Bethesda veteran highlighting the loss of an artist responsible for so much of the studio's history that, "If you've played a BGS game you've had his art on screen 99% of the time."

Ben Carnow, a Bethesda veteran of nearly 20 years himself, puts a spotlight on former lead weapon artist Dane Olds in a Bluesky post.

A LinkedIn post from Olds confirms, "I have been laid off alongside so many passionate and talented colleagues."

Like countless game developers now facing a horrible job market after layoffs, Olds indicates he may leave the games industry altogether, even after 20 years at Bethesda. "I'm now looking for work inside and outside of the game industry. If you can use my expertise in weapon art, character art, team building and management please reach out to me," he says.

Carnow says "Olds is my truest friend" and "an artist of legendary skill." He outlines just some of the key contributions Olds has made over the years, including: "Too many Skyrim weapons to count. All the Dwemer creatures. MUD CRABS. Like half the guns in Fallout 4. Loads of weapons in Starfield."

"Laid off by Microsoft," Carnow concludes.

In 2023, Bethesda ran a developer spotlight featuring Olds and discussing his work. "Fallout 3 was my first big AAA game so that's very special to me," Olds said at the time. "Skyrim was an amazing experience because I got to help define the look and feel of the Dwemer art in the game as well as getting to make all of the steel weapons and many artifacts like the Mace of Molag Bal. Oh! It also features one of the few creatures I've gotten to make – the mudcrab."

Olds was also pivotal in the development of Fallout 4's expanded weapon system. "On that title Todd [Howard] came to me one day and told me he had this crazy idea to make all our weapons moddable and that he wanted it to change the way they looked and played. So, I started in on the pipe weapon set and the rest is history. It was a lot of fun figuring out how to make that system work and I learned a ton working on that game."

Much like Olds, Bethesda also laid off 27-year veteran Christiane Meister, a core artist who made major contributions to Skyrim, especially the Khajiit and Argonian designs, as well as Oblivion, Morrowind, Fallout 4, and Fallout 4.

Cases like these are precisely why remaining Bethesda developers expect work on The Elder Scrolls 6 to be impacted by Microsoft's layoffs, fearing crunch, quality dips, or delays for the already long-awaited game.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is reportedly so desperate for another Fallout game that it's reassigned Fallout: New Vegas maker Obsidian to the series at the expense of a planned Avowed sequel and other projects.

Fallout and Elder Scrolls union says Bethesda layoffs didn't hurt Microsoft's "14 layers of management" – "We lost dozens of programmers, artists, designers and testers."

Obsidian Entertainment is reportedly early in development on another Fallout game, but it's apparently not the first time the studio has tried to jump back into the radioactive wasteland since making Fallout: New Vegas. According to Obsidian co-founder and former developer Chris Avellone, the studio had been working on the idea some time ago until Bethesda got involved.

Amidst all the turmoil in Xbox's suite of developers, Obsidian has seemingly also been affected by layoffs and project restructurings. And as Xbox eyes up its biggest franchises, Bloomberg reports that the studio behind arguably the best Fallout game is hoping to repeat its magic trick.

Part of that report claimed Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer had been directing another game that was similar to Fallout in many ways, but wasn't actually named after or related to the franchise. Asked about that project online, Avellone says he heard from sources at the studio that Sawyer's old project was actually "intended to be a Fallout game" before series steward Bethesda "put the kibosh on that a while ago, so it had to change its direction/tone from Fallout to something 'similar' to Fallout." No reason was given for Bethesda's alleged disapproval of the project.

The RPG veteran also alleges that an Avowed sequel, which was reportedly scrapped to make way for a Fallout game, is "still being worked on (for now) in the hopes of being 're-pitched'" later down the line in some form. Grounded 2 and The Outer Worlds 2 DLC are seemingly still on track.

Needless to say, I wouldn't take this as bulletproof confirmation of anything since Avellone hasn't worked at the studio for over a decade and his sources may be a little rusty.

Bethesda boss says the company must focus on its "strongest franchises" as Xbox layoffs reportedly hit The Elder Scrolls and Fallout makers hard.

Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian is reportedly making a big creative pivot following the latest Xbox layoffs, turning its attention to a new Fallout game and canceling a planned sequel to its 2025 RPG Avowed.

Per Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, Microsoft's Xbox restructuring has resulted in the loss of 25% of Obsidian's overall workforce, a devastating downsizing with equally seismic implications for the studio's slate of new projects. Bloomberg reports that Obsidian had been making good progress on a sequel to Avowed, an underrated RPG overshadowed by generational launches like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and massive blockbusters like Assassin's Creed Shadows. That, alongside other unannounced projects, are reportedly canceled.

Instead, Obsidian is said to be working on a new Fallout game, which lines up with Xbox's updated messaging, not to mention explicit guidance from Bethesda president Jill Braff, that tentpole franchises like Fallout need to be a bigger focus going forward. Details of the new Fallout are unclear - including its relation to the already confirmed Fallout 5 - but New Vegas director and Obsidian design director Josh Sawyer is said to be at the helm.

Bloomberg reports that Sawyer had previously been working on an RPG similar in structure and theme to Fallout, but without the Fallout name, at Obsidian. It's unclear if this new Fallout project is related.

I'm disappointed that we're missing out on a potential Avowed 2 due to even more layoffs at Xbox, but some Obsidian employees are reportedly continuing to work on the project in the hopes that it's one day revived. On the other hand, as much as any new developments that emerge as part of Xbox's reset are somewhat overshadowed by such a massive amount of lost jobs and livelihoods, there's no denying the potential in a new Josh Sawyer-directed Fallout game.

After 37 years at Microsoft, veteran who led Xbox Backward Compatibility program has been laid off: "I look forward to watching how Xbox evolves going forward"

As Bethesda is reportedly hit hard with layoffs from Microsoft, president Jill Braff has apparently told staff of the plan to focus on the company's strongest franchises going forward.

This week, Xbox announced its fifth wave of layoffs since purchasing Activision Blizzard, with this ongoing wave set to see 3,200 staff laid off over the next year. From the sounds of things, Bethesda is going to be one of the most affected targets of these layoffs, with former Bethesda project lead Jeff Gardiner reporting that 35 staff at Bethesda Game Studios are losing their jobs, while id Software is being gutted, reportedly losing 95 staff members.

On top of that, ZeniMax-owned studio Arkane is in the process of "beginning required consultation with its Works Council to review potential strategic options," while Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, Double Fine, and Compulsion Games have broken off from Xbox during this latest restructuring, with the latter two going independent.

The layoffs at id Software are a major surprise, as they come alongside reports that Bethesda is set to change focus to its biggest franchises, which reportedly features Doom and Quake – two franchises primarily developed by id Software – alongside the expected push for The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5. While these were first reported by Bloomberg, an internal email from Braff acquired by IGN seems to back this up.

"These shifts also reflect the realities of our industry and business – and our responsibility to ensure Bethesda is operating from a more stable foundation." Braff says, adding: "To be successful in the future, we need to change course. We must strengthen our business, return to sustainable growth, and ensure we can continue investing in our franchises and our players."

She continues, "To best position Bethesda for future growth, we are shifting from a planning model primarily centered on what's next for each independent studio to one that focuses on our strongest franchises." Braff adds, "By working more closely across the organization, sharing expertise and capabilities, and focusing our investments on the opportunities with the greatest potential, we believe we can better support our franchises and IP with meaningful long-term potential."

Of course, one wonders why Microsoft took this long to shift Bethesda's focus and work on getting the next Fallout and Elder Scrolls games out as soon as possible. However, with a significant portion of the talent at id Software affected – which reportedly is focused on the coders working on the id Tech engine – it feels almost antithetical to the studio's plan to focus on its first-person shooter franchises, and evidence of the poor planning from Xbox management that has led us to this point.

Josh Sawyer isn't taking any credit for Fallout: New Vegas's conception, despite the fact that he directed the beloved RPG at Obsidian.

Like most games, Fallout: New Vegas was a collaborative effort with various leads at Obsidian spearheading different elements of the world and story, but in terms of the initial concept, it's fairly established history that studio co-founder Chris Avellone came up with the idea for the starting incident, which is the courier getting shot in the head and being buried in a shallow grave. Sawyer, as director, set the overall vision of the project, but he makes clear in an interview with The Examined Game that he wasn't involved in the initial discussions at all.

"I wasn't part of any of those early conversations," he says. "When I was at Obsidian around 2009, I had been a lead designer on an Aliens project that went very badly," he adds, referring to the canceled horror RPG Aliens: Crucible, "and it was the owners who had been talking to Bethesda. I had no idea that any of this stuff was going on.

"But then Feargus Urquhart, who's the studio head of Obsidian, he came to me and he said 'hey, we're talking to Bethesda about making a Fallout game – I think it was called Fallout 3: New Vegas or Fallout 3: Sin City – but it was a proposal that I believe [Obsidian co-founder] Chris Avellone had written, and I was completely unaware that they were doing this really, but basically he said, 'would you be willing to direct it?', and I was like, 'yeah, what? Of course.'"

Hearing this, I can't help but be reminded of a recent video from Sawyer's old Obsidian co-worker and fellow Fallout royalty Tim Cain, in which Cain explains how he "fumbled" his way through his early career, including his time at Interplay in which he created the Fallout series. According to these two generational RPG developers, the trick to success in this industry is just to really make sure you're in the right place at the right time.

"I didn't pitch New Vegas. New Vegas almost literally fell in my lap, because Feargus just sort of said, 'here you go', and yeah, it was just luck. It was just pure luck, like most things in my career," Sawyer adds.

There's a good reason Fallout: New Vegas remains on our list of the best RPGs to play in 2026.

Time has been kind to Fallout: New Vegas, Obsidian's ambitious spin-off action RPG. These days, players appreciate the nuances and sense of place wandering the desolate Mojave desert, but back in 2010, the game lived in Fallout 3's shadow. Once those comparisons faded, director Josh Sawyer believes the release got a fairer look.

"The reception of New Vegas, when it launched, by professional reviewers was positive, but kind of lukewarm," Sawyer says on The Examined Game podcast (below). "People were not jumping out of their seats like, 'This is amazing.' And some reviews were pretty critical."

He notes there were comments that New Vegas "feels like a mod," or "feels almost identical to Fallout 3," or "it feels like an expansion pack." My personal recollection is frustration over bugs and glitches, but viewing Obsidian's project as glorified DLC sounds about right too.

As Sawyer notes, there's a significant overlap in assets and visuals, and coming two years after Fallout 3, it would've been a difficult descriptor to avoid. He clarifies he's "not saying everyone hated it," just the sci-fi adventure didn't land quite as the team hoped.

"It was only over time that there was this sense that people were appreciative," he recalls. "It's kind of like they forgot about the fact that they were annoyed that we reused so many assets and the gameplay was largely the same."

The modding community helped here as well. You can now find a hearty mix of improvements and tweaks that make New Vegas smoother and more enjoyable to play. In any case, if you haven't already played through it, I recommend you do. Just maybe not right after a run of Fallout 3.

Fallout: New Vegas lead says Obsidian has a "Karma Police" force to make sure "however you built your character" in their RPGs, "it's not gonna be the same experience" twice.

One of many things that makes Fallout: New Vegas a standout within the franchise is how well balanced its classes are. Any build you make is distinct and gratifying, an uncommon experience when it comes to RPGs of any type. Josh Sawyer, New Vegas' director, puts this down to a special squad within developer Obsidian who sense-check the player's options.

"We just wanted to set up the player to believe, however you built your character, it's not gonna be the same experience," he tells the Human Can Opener podcast about Fallout: New Vegas. "We're not gonna let you down. We're not gonna leave you out to dry and not give you something to be excited about."

Sawyer, who still serves as a game director at Obsidian, wants to make sure the RPG remains worthwhile and intriguing to players. So, "We have an informal job on the design team called 'Karma Police,'" he says. "At a few points during development, we'll ask a designer to go through all the scripts – usually in dialogue, but also everywhere in the game⁠ – and see 'How often is Guns being checked? How often is Charisma being checked? How often is Barter being checked?'"

There's essentially a spectrum for encounters where one skill is needed, or could be more useful than another, and Obsidian aims to be within a certain threshold on all fronts. "Let's say there's 40 [checks] in Medicine, and there's like, 28 in Science. Great! Get in the ballpark," Sawyer muses. "You don't want to go huge stretches of the game and be like, 'Man, I invested in this skill and it never comes up.'"

I would agree, and I'd go further to say, if you make these internal stats too arbitrary – make them all 35 or something – players would start noticing the patterns through comparison. A little bit of randomness is good to keep us on our toes, and perhaps more importantly, to encourage replays. And if ever there's an RPG that's good for replaying, it's Fallout: New Vegas.

Fallout designer Tim Cain "fumbled" through his career and "didn't think about a sequel" to the first apocalyptic RPG or Arcanum while making them.

Before there was Fallout 3 in 2008, there was Van Buren – the sadly canceled, Black Isle Studios-led third Fallout – and even though it never came to fruition in the end, it could've been one heck of an RPG.

Or, at least, it sounds like it might've been. Obsidian Entertainment's Joshua Eric "Josh" Sawyer, now best known for his work on genre gems like Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity, seems to think it was shaping up to be quite a game.
He explains as much in a new interview with The Examined Game on YouTube (below), first noting that he "wasn't the lead" on Van Buren, that role belonged to Chris Avellone. He was the lead system designer, however.

Things were complicated over time after the team was stripped and left with a "skeleton crew," though, as Sawyer puts it. Resources "got taken away to work on another project outside of Black Isle." Considering the work that had been done on Van Buren, it was disappointing.

"This is such a bummer because we made a cool demo," as Sawyer recalls. "It looks very dated now, but… it was like 2003 when this demo was finished."

He notes that you can find said demo online, and after a quick search myself, I'll admit it does look pretty dated… but also pretty dang solid. It certainly fits the vibe of the first Fallout games a bit more than Bethesda Game Studios' own Fallout 3 does.

As Sawyer says himself, "I thought it was a really cool demo, and it showed that we were doing some pretty neat things." But, of course, nothing ever came from it, unfortunately.

According to Sawyer, however, publisher Interplay eventually did see it. "They said, 'Well, if we had known that you had made this, maybe we wouldn't have canceled it.'"

It's a frustrating consideration for the Obsidian dev and his former coworkers, as they "repeatedly" asked for acknowledgement of Van Buren. "We invited you over and over and over again, and you never came," he recalls. Sadly, as Sawyer concludes, "they weren't interested in it."

This all lines up with what others have said in the past. Fallout co-creator Tim Cain stated that the original canceled Fallout 3 could've shipped and been "a really good game," for example.

It's upsetting to know Van Buren won't ever see the light of day properly, I suppose – but for the time being, we do have fan-led projects like the Nexus Mods version of Van Buren that are playable for free.

Fallout designer Tim Cain "fumbled" through his career and "didn't think about a sequel" to the first apocalyptic RPG or Arcanum while making them.

They say if you want something you have to go out and get it, but apparently when it comes to co-creating one of the most successful RPG series of all time, that's not always the case.

In a new episode in a long-running series I call Tim Cain Talking About Stuff, the veteran RPG developer yaps about his approach to career planning and how that's changed from his early days at Interplay, in which he would just let things fall into his lap as fortuitously as they did, according to Cain. As the video goes on he actively encourages young developers to plan out their careers more strategically, but having co-created the Fallout franchise and served as designer on Arcanum, it seems his passive work ethic paid off rather serendipitously.

"I fumbled my way through my career. Opportunities arose that I was just in a good position to take, but I didn't actually seek them out," says Cain. "I usually thought very short term – what am I doing on this game I'm working on now – to the point where I rarely even thought about a sequel."

Of course, there ended up being several sequels to Fallout, but Cain left the series during development of Fallout 2, a decision he explains in a genuinely insightful video from a few years back. And while Cain says he "didn't think about a sequel to Fallout while I was making it," (or Arcanum for the matter), he was originally against a sequel altogether but was assigned to it anyway despite his desire to work on something else. Poor Tim.

"I rarely thought long term, I'm talking five or 10 years in the future. That was just not in the Tim brain space," he says.

As an aspiring creative in an incredibly competitive industry, I have a friendly jealousy toward Cain for becoming one of the most noteworthy game devs of his time despite having such a nonchalant approach to the most formative years of his career. Again, he advises young developers to not take his early approach to career planning, but it sure seems to have worked out well for him.

Fallout co-creator says too many gamers "like hating things," which "doesn't lead to a better game" for devs: "I just tapped out, and that's sad"

Eight years and 68 updates later, the wasteland has never looked better. It's funny to think that few thought that Fallout 76 had a chance of surviving, let alone thriving, back when Bethesda Game Studios first announced its shared-world RPG – assumed to be too vastly out of step with the foundational Fallout experience to succeed.

And yet here we are, with Fallout 76 hosting one of the loveliest communities in all of gaming and providing safe haven for Fallout show fans looking for continuing adventures out in the wilds. Bethesda released a major new Fallout 76 update on June 2, Infestations, so we caught up with creative director Jon Rush and production director Bill LaCoste to get an update from the frontlines of Appalachia.

Talk to me about the Infestations update, what does it bring to Fallout 76?

Jon Rush, creative director: The wasteland is a dangerous place, and sometimes us wastelanders need to be reminded of that. Each update to the game that we've made since launch has kind of been the next chapter, and a lot of the focus has been different groups moving into Appalachia and setting up shop there. But the Super Mutants, the Scorched, and all of those misprogrammed robots are kind of getting tired of that – they want some of these places back. So Infestations unlocks close to 40 unique locations in the game that were once abandoned and are now full of action. Areas that have been taken over by these nefarious groups, and it's up to us Wastelanders to take them back and reclaim the wasteland.

It's still early days yet, but are players already shaping the way you're thinking about this update moving forward?

Jon Rush: You know, Bill and I largely consider ourselves to be pretty good players of our game. When we were playtesting Infestations with our team before release, they were a pretty good challenge. Little did we know, once it went live, people would be mowing through it much quicker than we ever did [Laughter]. So that has given us the next steps forward for making the feature better. So Infestation quests will get harder – much harder. And we have plans to continue improving that feature and expanding on it for the next patch and the one after that, and so on. Player feedback is so important.

This time last year we were talking about Gone Fission, which introduced fishing to Fallout 76. How do you avoid whiplash shifting between such different concepts?

Jon Rush: In the past, I've used the phrase: 'thickening the experience of Fallout 76.' What I mean by that is that we're always looking for ways to enrich existing features and playspaces in the game. Fishing did exactly that. 'Anywhere you can swim, you can fish!' is something you probably heard us say last year – that tells me, as a player, that I should be exploring the whole map again, just to see what kind of stuff can be pulled out of the water. In many ways, that fishing feature inspired what future features will look like, in that they are designed to thicken and enrich that experience.

How does that focus apply forward to what you delivered with Infestations?

Jon Rush: Despite how obviously different Infestations may seem from Gone Fission, they actually aren't that different. Both have experiences that can take place across the entire map, perhaps in places that you haven't ever been to or haven't been to in a while. So really, the main difference here is that there's no water and that the fish fight back [laughter]. So yeah, it's about hitting those same hallmarks of us wanting to enrich the existing play experience in a new way.

To deliver Gone Fission and Infestations in the space of a year, it highlights something that's so core to Fallout – its capacity to be quite whimsical in an otherwise bleak world.

Bill LaCoste, production director: It's all about getting that Fallout feel right. We're looking for a balance between these darker, more serious tones and more levity, humorous moments. It's the balance of these aspects wrapped under a blanket of retro-futuristic Americana that makes Fallout – that's the Fallout sweet spot! It's echoed in the games and in the show, and that's where the stories are most effective. And so as we expand Fallout 76, making new features and crafting new stories, that's something we're always very mindful of.

Given the importance of that Americana vibe, does it rule Fallout 76 from taking wastelanders further afield in future updates?

Jon Rush: Americana provides such a unique timbre to the game and to the tone that, if you removed that, a big part of it may no longer feel like Fallout anymore. That's not to say that there aren't numerous other stories happening in the world outside of the United States that take place in the Fallout universe, but in the way that we present our stories, that Americana element is a crucial element to our world.

Bill LaCoste: There's also this sense of players being able to think about what's happening across other parts of the world on their own, there's some mystique there and we like that. I don't know if there will ever be an expansion beyond America, but I think there's a lot of importance in keeping it that way – so that players can think about what is happening around the world and create their own stories, which the modding community can take advantage of too!

Jon Rush: I mean, let me give a special shout-out to Fallout London! It's great to see people picturing what's happening in other parts of the world at the same time, I think it's fantastic. That's a strength of Fallout – that it can be a spark which ignites all these stories in people's heads, and it's great to explore those.

Bethesda Game Studios released two major Fallout 76 updates since Fallout Season 2 concluded earlier this year, I assume the show has been a motivating force?

Jon Rush: It's been great. It emboldens the team to continue telling great Fallout stories. A strength of the show is that its creators are such huge fans of the IP and of the world, so the stories they're telling are genuinely Fallout in every way. People watch it and they want more of it, so they come to Fallout 3, 4, New Vegas, and 76 to get more of that storytelling. So it emboldens the team to see that kind of reaction. And our community has been so great – so welcoming to all of these new players into the game. I know that's something you wouldn't really expect to see in a wasteland, people being charitable and giving things to each other, but it's been really great.

Bill LaCoste: I think that the big question of 'how do I get more of this' that Jon just noted, it's like 'hey, we have these games that do this!' And I think some of those people are actually surprised when they come into the games, that they are so much like the show – with the same humor and style. Kilter Films and Amazon have done an amazing job with the detail, and with the way that the stories being told are exactly like the Fallout games.

It must be pretty energizing to see so much enthusiasm around the franchise?

Bill LaCoste: I've watched both seasons multiple times now, with other friends and family, and I just never get bored of it. That's a great feeling for us and the team, because we don't ever come into work not wanting to do something with the Fallout universe, to make it better, and to do something new for our fans to keep this world going.

Jon Rush: The Fallout show has brought in new fans of Fallout. It's also brought in new gamers, who can also then go and experience all of the games that everybody else is making! It's funny, I was at a restaurant one time and my phone case says 'Fallout' on the back, and I just put it on the table not even thinking about it. The waiter comes by and he's like, 'oh yeah, you like Fallout too?' So I asked him which game was his favorite, hoping that he would say 76 [laughter]. And he goes 'Wait, there's a game? I just watched the show!' And I'm like, 'Dude, there are multiple games, get in there!' He said he was going to download [Fallout 76] when he got home, and I said, 'yeah, good for you!'

Looking for something else to play? Check out the upcoming Xbox Series X games, or our pick of the best MMOs to play in 2026.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

ZeniMax Media, the holding company overseeing video game developers and publishers like Bethesda Game Studios, might be in the midst of some pretty heavy layoffs.

Founded in 1999 as the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, ZeniMax now operates under Microsoft's Xbox division following its acquisition in 2021. Although it boasts various successful titles at the house of Bethesda – RPGs like Fallout 4 and Skyrim included – it could be facing some financial trouble.

Duke Nukem co-creator George Broussard confirms as much in a new online post, alleging that layoffs are underway at ZeniMax.

"Getting word that layoffs at Zenimax have begun," he writes. "Heard rumblings recently that the cuts may be much deeper than you expect. Buckle up!"

What does that mean for ongoing projects like The Elder Scrolls 6? In response to a comment stating the layoffs might not affect anyone working on Fallout or The Elder Scrolls, Broussard seems to agree they indeed don't, asking, "Oh, is that public now? That's exactly what I heard a few days ago."

As for Bethesda itself, Broussard doesn't appear to be too concerned: "Bethesda will be fine. They make all the money." It's certainly an interesting position to hold, taking into account the ties between Bethesda and ZeniMax, but I suppose it makes sense.

Xbox has been going through a time as of late, with reports of studio closures floating about the web left, right, and center. Broussard himself has spoken about it in a recent thread.

"This is the hard truth of it all," it reads. "Earnings and profit. But it is also way amplified when there is a regime change in a mega-corp, and everything changes, and new plans are put in place. The teams and employees pay the price for years of mismanagement of old execs."

He goes on to say, "a zillion devs and lots of studios are going to burn for the sins of the fathers," and "there is a lot of Xbox mgmt to blame here going back 15 years."

It's worth a full read-through, but it's admittedly not an easy one to digest. It's shaky for devs and publishers everywhere right now, and it seems it's only becoming less and less stable.

Fallout: New Vegas remake rumors heat up as Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake leaker says previous reports are credible

Fallout: New Vegas rumors have been floating across the internet for longer than a tumbleweed takes to roll across the wasteland, but those previous reports are apparently credible, at least according to the prominent leaker who routinely reveals Nintendo news before Nintendo can get to it itself.

Leaker NateTheHate's been a big name within Nintendo circles for a while now. He first tipped everyone off on the exact random evening the Nintendo Switch 2 would be revealed. More recently, he also leaked the existence of the upcoming Star Fox revival and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's remake well before those games were formally announced.

And, now, he's thrown his hat into the ring of countless Fallout rumors. Asked about the credibility of whispers proclaiming a Fallout: New Vegas remake does in fact exist, the leaker simply says, "The previous reports have merit."

Hopes for a rebuilt Fallout: New Vegas first kicked off years ago when improperly redacted court documents from Microsoft and the FTC's court battles mentioned remasters for both Oblivion and Fallout 3 were in the works. The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered eventually came to pass, but fans have since been hoping that New Vegas latches on to its older brother's unofficial remaster plans. The Fallout TV show's deep references to the fan favorite game didn't hurt, either.

Windows Central also this year reported that both Bethesda's Fallout 3 and Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas were getting the remake treatment, citing anonymous sources in the know. Recent toy listings related to New Vegas, a 16-year-old game, mind you, added more fuel to the fire.

It's still worth taking it with a pinch of salt, but given NateTheHate's recent track record, there's no doubt that some fans are now going to be feeling extra confident that a remake is going to surface eventually.

Fallout: New Vegas designer says don't hold your breath for an Oblivion-style remaster: "I don't think Bethesda has the engineering knowhow."

16 years since its release, Fallout: New Vegas is widely considered an RPG masterpiece, but when looked at from within the context of Bethesda's notoriously tight 18-month development turnaround demand, it's even more of a monumental achievement. According to director Josh Sawyer, there was even more they wanted to do with the game but had to cut due for time.

In a new video called 'Setting Goals' shared to Sawyer's official YouTube channel, the Obsidian veteran explains how his hopes and goals for Fallout: New Vegas were defined by how little time the studio had been given to work on it. It's no secret that Fallout: New Vegas was built largely using existing Bethesda assets from Fallout 3, but that wasn't only because it needed to fit seamlessly alongside the other games in the franchise – it was also just the most efficient way to do things.

"For Fallout: New Vegas ... my goal was – well, we were constrained by the 18 months from the beginning," says Sawyer. "So, I said, 'let's modestly restructure some of the systemic things that Bethesda did. Try to do as much as we can to emulate their style of open world exploration, and let's try to just tell the best stories we can with the best quest reactivity that we know how to do.' Because there was very little else that we could do in that window of time."

Of course, it wasn't immediately clear back in 2010 that Fallout: New Vegas was about to become one of the most beloved games in the series, as the game was a technical disaster at launch. That said, Sawyer makes it clear that he was confident from the very beginning despite the time constraints he faced.

"I believed in that team," he says. "We had fantastic designers and writers, and I believed that they could make really great quests and content. So, I just said, 'Look, we can't set our sights on anything crazier than this. So, let's just make the best quest content and story content that we can.'

"And that was the goal. And get it done within 18 months, which meant that a lot of other ideas about things that we could do had to just fall by the wayside. So the 18 months wasn't a goal, it was a constraint but we had to work within it and so that's why it became so focused and I think the team did a fantastic job."

Bethesda "lectured" Fallout New Vegas designer for saying the RPG would run at 30 FPS: "'Why do you have a f***ing engine that can't run 30 frames per second?'"

As the wait for new games from Bethesda Game Studios like The Elder Scrolls 6 continues, talented fans of older RPGs like Fallout 4 are figuring out ways to, erm, make Skyrim run in them…? Yeah, you know what, that checks out.

In case you missed it – because there's a pretty big chance you have, as it's incredibly random – a Fallout 4 player known as "RPGKING" on YouTube has managed to play Skyrim in the 2015 post-apocalyptic gem after somehow getting it to run… albeit admittedly with "a few bugs definitely to work out" before releasing it as a mod to the public.

"Obviously, this won't be available" until everything is fixed, he notes in his aptly-dubbed "Beat Todd to it" video.

It's amusing to watch – I mean, how could Skyrim running on a Pip-Boy in Fallout 4 not be? The iconic "hey, you" opening scene in static-y black and white is truly a sight to behold, and even the mouse and movement controls seem to work.

It's still in rough shape for now, however, with "some lag to fix" and other issues, but RPGKING reports that "everything else works perfectly." Here's hoping it does, because I can't wait to see it up for download.

Although hilariously enough, the creator concludes his video saying he's "pretty happy with this" – only to then admit it "looks like I've got a lot of bugs to flush out still."

Regardless, fans (it's me, I'm fans) can't get enough of the chaotic idea as a whole, with folks unsurprisingly blaming the lengthy wait between Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls 6 for such Frankenstein-y mods. "This is what 15 years without a sequel does to a fanbase," one comment reads.

Another jokes, "It's a Bethesda game within a Bethesda game; I imagine bugs will be part of the experience every step of the way." My favorite reply of all, though, jests, "It's what Todd Howard would've wanted." It might just be, anon. It might just be.

Skyrim mod has you slay dragons "by debating them on the geopolitics of Tamriel," turning Bethesda's RPG into an absurd game of Civilization.

Somewhere in the ether, there's evidence of the Generic Universal Role Playing System, or GURPS, version of Interplay's Fallout, in which franchise co-creator Tim Cain dumped every adjective he's ever heard of before a botched licensing deal ultimately led the 1997 game to the SPECIAL ruleset current developer Bethesda still uses. Cain is missing most of that evidence – or he thought so, before unearthing a fat list of advantages, disadvantages, quirks, and skills he shares in a new YouTube video giving us a rare sniff of what Fallout development was like 30 years ago.

"I thought these were lost," Cain says in the video posted May 13. "Well, I found written notes of the final advantages, disadvantages, quirks, and skills had it been selected to be used in the GURPS version of Fallout."

Interplay had Cain destroy his archive of the project after he left the company, and the developer apparently misplaced the separate archive Cain handed over before shipping Fallout in 1997. But that's in the past – Cain finally has some proof of the elaborate wasteland GURPS Fallout, and he's eager to share each exhausting detail.

In terms of attributes, strength, health, IQ, and dexterity are a given. "We were of course using all four of those," says Cain, but then there was a whole separate spice cabinet of advantageous and disadvantageous characteristics players could use.

He lists ingredients in a large pot of soup: "Acute hearing, acute taste and smell, acute vision; alertness; [...] ambidexterity; animal empathy; appearance attractive, appearance handsome, and appearance very handsome.

"Charisma; combat reflexes, common sense, danger sense; eidetic memory, high pain threshold, intuition; literacy, luck; night vision, peripheral vision; rapid healing," and you could have good reputation in various Fallout factions, including, in your Vault, Shady Sands, Junktown, the Hub, Brotherhood of Steel, and so on.

"We also added strong will, toughness, and voice," says Cain. These advantages would have all cost character points to purchase, and, "in essence, made the game a little easier in some small aspect," Cain adds. The disadvantage list gleefully kicks up the seesaw and balances that out.

In addition to a number of bad or enemy-level reputations you could earn among all of Fallout's major groups, including your Vault, GURPS Fallout also let you develop "Alcoholism. Odious personal habit: Bad breath. Odious personal habit: Pick nose," says Cain. "Color blindness, hard of hearing, low pain threshold, no sense of smell or taste – it's also called anosmia. One eye; overweight, skinny – those are both disadvantages in GURPS. Stuttering."

GURPS Fallout would have also made you vulnerable to various addictions, including to "physical adders" that adjusted your strength, dex, and hardiness of your health, "mental adders" that boosted IQ, or combat-specific drugs Cain calls "berserk drugs."

These, of course, are all separate to the "bad temper, berserk, blood lust" you could incur, or "code of honor – it's called, 'You Never Break Your Word,' combat paralysis; compulsive lying, delusion: hears voices; gullibility, honesty; lecherousness; pacifism: cannot kill, pacifism: self-defense only; phobia of insects, phobia of monsters, phobia of reptiles, phobia of darkness; sense of duty to the Vault, truthfulness, unluckiness; weak will." Phew. These disadvantages are starting to sound like the reasons for my therapy bill.

Cain says there were additionally three levels of ugliness, from mildly unattractive to, "You're the most disgusting thing ever born in the Vault," Cain explains. "You're lucky they didn't kill you as a mutant." And because this is GURPS Fallout we're talking about, you could also have so many quirks, they might have eventually cast Zooey Deschanel to play you in a movie. Two of my favorite options Cain lists are "hates cows" and "boisterous walker," which would make your footsteps fall like anvils.

As for skills, some highlights GURPS Fallout would have launched with are "jumping," "sex appeal," and Cain says, "savoir-faire, one of my favorite ones, the skill of good manners and getting along in a social setting."

"We had all of those in the game at some level of implementation in early 1997," Cain concludes.

"Tim, not to be too dark," quickly replies one fan on YouTube. "Can you release the source code for Fallout as your last will and testament?"

Not missing a beat, Cain says, "I'd have to have it first."

Xbox studio accidentally gave away the RPG that led to OG Fallout for free, so now it's giving everyone a way to play it legitimately.

Yo, Mista White! Aaron Paul is set to star in Fallout season 3.

According to Deadline, Paul has joined the cast in an undisclosed role, which reunites him with Westworld producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. He starred as Caleb Nicholas in seasons 3 and 4 of the hit sci-fi show, which ended in 2022.

Back in 2024, Nolan let slip that Paul, who is a huge fan of the video game franchise, was hoping for a role in Fallout season 2. The rumor was that he would play the leader of Caesar's Legion, a role that ultimately went to Macaulay Culkin. We don't know what role Paul will play next, though we do hope it's an entirely new one made for the upcoming season's surprise location...

Paul joins the newly promoted Annabel O’Hagan (Steph) and Dave Register (Chet), who will now be series regulars. No word yet as to whether Culkin's character will receive a promotion as well (following the, uh, in-show promotion his character receives), or if Kyle MacLachlan will return as a series regular following his character's, uh, demotion.

Aaron Paul posted the announcement to his personal Instagram account, with star Walton Goggins commenting, "That's my guy! I've got some Radaway waiting for you, Cowboy!!!"

Fallout received an early renewal for a third season back in May 2025, ahead of its December release date, with production on Fallout season 3 expected to kick off this month. The series has amassed over 100 million views across both seasons, making it Prime Video's most successful original show.

Fallout season 2 is streaming now on Prime Video. For more on what to watch, check out our guide to everything new on Prime Video in April.

An Xbox developer made a big whoopsie and accidentally gave players a free (but broken) version of the game that led to OG Fallout, but rather than snatching the lucky (but, again, botched) freebie away from gamers, the studio is simply giving people a way to play it properly.

"A couple weeks ago an error made Wasteland Remastered free on the Microsoft/Xbox Store, but what people snagged before we fixed the glitch can't actually be played," developer inXile Entertainment writes on social media. "So, we're giving them one that can."

The developer says players who were lucky enough to redeem Wasteland Remastered while it was temporarily available for free will soon have the non-working version of the game removed from their libraries automatically. Those same players should have a new, unbroken digital copy of Wasteland Remastered waiting for them in their Xbox accounts.

For those unsure of where to find the game, inXile Entertainment points people to the 'Offers & Credits' section of the Xbox page. "Hope you enjoy and see you in the Wasteland."

And for those not in the know, Wasteland is a top-down old-school role-playing game set in a very scrappy, post-apocalyptic, post-nuclear version of America. Sound familiar? Well, the game was first developed by Interplay Productions before the storied company used it as a basis to then make the first Fallout.

As inXile says, Wasteland is essentially "the grand pappy of post-apoc." It was Fallout before Fallout was a thing.

Interplay co-founder Brian Fargo then opened inXile Entertainment as an independent developer many years later and eventually wrangled the ownership of the Wasteland franchise away from Electronic Arts, leading to two more pretty excellent entries in the series. The studio and the rights to Wasteland were acquired by Xbox in 2018, shortly before Xbox bought the actual Fallout IP. The more things change...

InXile Entertainment's now working on a time-bending, steampunk-ish first-person game called Clockwork Revolution, which is shaping up to be one of the more exciting new games on the horizon.

Clockwork Revolution could be the most expressive Xbox RPG in years, with inXile aiming to "bring the level of reactivity from our isometric titles into something first-person."

You probably know Tim Cain best for cheating the original Fallout concept and leading the first game's development – or heck, maybe you know him for his highly quotable YouTube channel, which has generated plenty of headlines both here at GamesRadar+ and across the internet. But Cain's RPG CV includes an extensive list of bangers beyond Fallout, and it seems he's hoping to make at least one more before his second retirement.

That's according to the man himself, speaking in a video celebrating the third anniversary of his YouTube channel. Cain reckons he's starting to run out of topics to speak on and stories to share, and says "the channel is probably nearing the point where I see it being done. I think I've explained to you the game industry as much as I can. I've told all my stories, the fun ones and not so fun ones, and you've heard it all."

But the part the RPG fans will want to see is this: "I think I am going to make one more game before I retire again for the second time," Cain muses, before adding, "but who knows?"

I'm not 100% clear on what Cain considers as his first retirement. He worked at Interplay, where he shipped Fallout, from 1991 through 1998, eventually leaving to co-found Troika Games with fellow Fallout veterans Jason Anderson and Leonard Boyarsky. There, he worked on a trio of cult classics in the form of Arcanum, The Temple of Elemental Evil, and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.

While all three of those titles have armies of fans these days, they weren't enough to keep Troika afloat, and the studio shut down in 2005. He then worked on the ill-fated MMO WildStar before ending up at Obsidian in 2011, where he served as a programmer Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny and co-directed The Outer Worlds.

That's a pretty continuous range of employment, but I think this is where the retirement comes in, as Cain stopped working full-time at Obsidian sometime after the launch of The Outer Worlds. That still didn't stop him from serving as a creative consultant on the second game, so it's definitely a loose kind of retirement, and he's now full-time at Obsidian once again.

Presumably, then, he's figuring on that "one more game" being whatever project he's working on at Obsidian, but he's already teased that he can't say much about it. Fair enough, given that he's barred by an NDA, but even then he's teasing fans a bit: "Don't bother guessing; you're not gonna guess right." So no New Vegas 2, then?

These are the best RPGs you can play today.

Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian Entertainment ran into a spot of legal trouble over some real-world material folded into the parody-heavy RPG, according to studio and RPG veteran Chris Avellone.

Speaking with YouTuber TKs-Mantis, Avellone recalls butting heads with Bethesda over trademarked material which Obsidian evidently didn't fully account for at the time. This particular discussion begins with a mention of Wild Wasteland, a trait that introduces a range of content and encounters that generally reference other media, from films to older Fallout games.

"We got into trouble for some of those things because it wasn't passed along what some of the jokes were," Avellone says. "We had the Godzilla gecko that Bethesda didn't realize was in there. Holy crap, when they found out. 'Oh great, now we'll get in trouble for this.'"

This issue apparently began with the very beginning of the game, where you're examined by Doc Mitchell.

"We already got in trouble for the Rorschach test because we didn't get the trademark for that, so those folks came to Bethesda and said, 'We're gonna have a fun lawsuit on our hands, so pony up,'" Avellone recalls. "You could hear all the groans over at Bethesda. 'Oh my god, I don't think they realized they should check the trademark for that.' We certainly didn't realize it."

Avellone's comments, both here and elsewhere in the lengthy interview, frame a pretty clear pattern regarding Bethesda's feedback to the New Vegas team, with the studio allegedly giving a lecture about 30 FPS issues and presenting a whole powerpoint about "all the things Obsidian did wrong".

Fallout: New Vegas designer says don't hold your breath for an Oblivion-style remaster: "I don't think Bethesda has the engineering knowhow."

If you get a forum reply from someone claiming to be Fallout co-creator Tim Cain, I'll tell you right now, it's more likely to be from a Nigerian prince than the real Tim Cain. Cain is too unhappy with the way gaming is discussed online to ever visit a forum again.

He explains in an April 22 YouTube video with the educational title, "Why I Don't Post On Forums Anymore." You can watch the entire thing below, but the short of it is that gamers have become mean old dogs.

Decades ago, "I used to post on [discussion system predating the World Wide Web] Usenet sites all the time," Cain says. "I'd post about my D&D games. I'd post about Fallout in the '90s, when we were doing that. All this slowed down about 15 years ago and pretty much stopped."

The issue, Cain explains with displeasure, is anger seems to now dominate forum conversations. "They're anger-forward," he says. "It was always the case that there were some people on the forums who were venting. I get it. I mean, way back in Usenet, you can find people who were upset because they couldn't get Fallout to install." Still, Cain was able to talk to these grumpy people and figure out a solution that both of them were happy with. Now, he thinks it's nearly impossible to come to an amicable understanding like that.

"It just seems like a lot of people want to hate things," Cain worries. "That's what they like. They seem to like hating things, which confuses me." Cain argues, "That kind of environment, I don't think is conducive to getting better games."

"I used to have these great conversations with people on forums," Cain remembers wistfully. "Now that's all gone. It's all boiled down to, 'This is stupid, this person's lazy, this is all woke.' And it doesn't lead anywhere." So Cain gave up on collecting feedback from forums. He says, "I just tapped out. And, that's sad. Because those conversations are now lost."

I've been frequenting forums for only a fraction of the time that Cain has, but even I've witnessed online conversations become more rude and less creative across my lifetime. The takeaway must be, then, we should all exercise our ability to understand the person on the other side of our screens is, indeed, a flesh-and-blood person. But they're probably not Tim Cain.

Fallout: New Vegas 2 was real at one point before Obsidian's plans "quickly evaporated," says senior designer, but a revival "will not happen in the next six years at least, if ever."

Although these days Fallout: New Vegas is in contention for the title of best Fallout game and is a beloved RPG, generally, it wasn't as universally loved when it first came out back in 2010. You could argue its many technical shortcomings were the main factor weighing down its overall reception, but even the expansions that would later drop weren't all immediate hits with players or critics. Point is, it's safe to say Fallout: New Vegas was something of a sleeper hit for the series, and apparently, publisher Bethesda wasn't shy to highlight the game's initial failures directly to developer Obsidian in powerpoint slide format.

Fallout: New Vegas senior designer Chris Avellone recently sat down for a wide-ranging discussion with YouTuber TKs-Mantis (thanks, PC Gamer), and at one point the game's survival horror-tinged Dead Money DLC got brought up. Despite TKs-Mantis's praise, Avellone looked visibly conflicted, which prompted the YouTuber to ask for an explanation.

"The reason I'm making these expressions and hesitations about it is because, despite what I thought would be cool as an examination of Fallout, it was so different than the core experience that it obviously was a huge turn-off for a lot of people, and I completely understand that," Avellone said.

At that point, TKs-Mantis brushed off those concerns with a defiant, "Fuck 'em," which Avellone rebuffed.

"Uh, well, when it comes to sales and reviews, it matters," Avellone said, adding:

"Bethesda used review scores against us for the DLCs for, like, why they didn't want to keep doing things with us anyway. Even though they didn't wanna do anything anyway, so whatever."

It's very apparent throughout this three-and-a-half hour interview that Avellone harbors some unsettled feelings about his stay at Obsidian and Bethesda as a publisher and IP holder – and he's been vocal in the past about his less-than-amicable departure from the studio in 2015 – but assuming his account of this meeting with higher-ups about New Vegas is accurate, it's easy to see why things didn't work out.

"It was fun, it was fun. They had a whole powerpoint. Not even about the DLC, they had a whole powerpoint about all the things Obsidian did wrong, and we were like 'Wow!' and they showed it to us. And we were like… 'OK, this is hugely morale-boosting,'" said Avellone. "'I thought we did a good product for you guys that kept Fallout in the public consciousness, but you guys don't seem very happy about it despite the fact you reaped a lot of the rewards for it.'"

Of course, Bethesda would end up taking the series in-house once more for Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, with Obsidian moving on to eventually create original IP like Pillars of Eternity, The Outer Worlds, Grounded, and Pentiment. There was a time, long ago, when Obsidian had planned to make a Fallout: New Vegas 2, but that "quickly evaporated," per Avellone.

Fallout 5 rumored setting New Orleans was originally discussed at New Vegas studio Obsidian, and veteran dev still believes "there's a lot of potential there"

Fallout: New Vegas 2 was but a sparkle in the eyes of top leadership at Obsidian before plans for a sequel fell apart, reveals the studio's former senior designer Chris Avellone.

In a recent talk with TKs-Mantis, Avellone is asked about Fallout 2 developer Black Isle Studios' canceled Fallout 3, which was codenamed Van Buren. Specifically, TKs-Mantis asks whether his theory that "New Vegas acts as if the events of Van Buren happen" is correct. It turns out TKs-Mantis is "partly right" and that "there are certain things that were gonna take place in Van Buren that do happen during the time of New Vegas," Avellone says.

Other than what Avellone calls "the caravan wars," which refers to a conflict between the NCR and a "merchant mafia" that would've been a major plot point in Van Buren - and which we saw "a little bit" of in New Vegas - "not a ton of" Van Buren's story influenced New Vegas. That said, Avellone confirms he did "try and set up Van Buren for New Vegas," and that's where we get to the thrust of this story.

"That's why all those nukes go off, cause I'm like, 'well, I need to destabilize some regions. Like, not wipe out factions, but I need to shake up both the Brotherhood, I need to shake up the NCR, I need to have them even more at each other's throats in California,'" he says. "And so that was the reason for some of the pre-cursor decisions for some of the DLC stuff and some of the stuff in core New Vegas ... When we still thought we'd be able to do a New Vegas 2, or whatever the title would be, but that quickly evaporated."

Y'all, Chris Avellone just said the words New Vegas 2 in sequential order. Of course, this means very little for a potential New Vegas sequel, and in fact Avellone himself says that "will not happen in the next six years at least, if ever," but just hearing those words from the original Fallout: New Vegas designer is sure to ring alarm bells for a bunch of people.

Avellone is probably right to temper expectations for a potential New Vegas 2. Although there was a credible report from 2022 that "very early" talks were happening at Microsoft, we haven't heard anything since. Naturally, there's always hopium for the huffing, but as recently as November of last year, Obsidian's VP of operations acknowledged the demand for a New Vegas sequel but stressed the studio's focus on its own original IP. That doesn't mean Xbox couldn't tap Bethesda Game Studios to make the game, but those guys are a little tied up with a little something called The Elder Scrolls 6.

Fallout 5 rumored setting New Orleans was originally discussed at New Vegas studio Obsidian, and veteran dev still believes "there's a lot of potential there"

Warm beignets and cold Nuka-Cola – these simple pleasures could be yours if Fallout 5 rumors are true and the upcoming Bethesda game is set in swamp city New Orleans. Or, they could be yours if you go back in time and kiss Todd Howard's feet 900 times, convincing him to release the Fallout game Obsidian veteran Chris Avellone hoped to set in the Louisiana wasteland.

Avellone, who served as a senior designer on New Vegas in 2010, reminisced to YouTuber TKs-Mantis in a chunky new interview about the time "we still thought we'd be able to do New Vegas 2, or whatever the title would be" at Obsidian, along with vague plans for a Fallout New Orleans. Avellone now says, with a little bitterness, that those thoughts about New Vegas 2 "quickly evaporated," and he doubts Obsidian would return to the project any time "in the next six years, at least – if ever." But he still has hope for New Orleans.

"One of the designers-slash-producers on our other projects suggested New Orleans as a location, and I was so stoked for that. It's going to be a weird reference, but there is an old comic franchise started by this author-slash-artist Matt Wagner called Grendel, and a lot of the Grendel stories are very post-apocalyptic," says Avellone about a noir series first published in 1983, whose antihero explores his vengefulness in stories often painted in only black, white, and red. It shares a cyanide sense of humor with the Fallout series in how it discusses power and those who wield it, so I'm not surprised Avellone found it magnetic.

"There was one that was written in New Orleans. It was called, like, 'Four Devils, One Hell,' and it's a fantastic story," he continues to say about the 1993 Grendel Tales run whose first issue synopsis could easily be mistaken for a Fallout TV show episode logline: "Montovani is hired by Batiaque to find his brother's murderer and tangles with a Dulac. Batiaque is also murdered. Bixby kills vampires, thinking himself a king's knight, but he is really Grendel's accountant. Gloria preserves art in England and goes on treasure hunt."

"As soon as I read it – while I was doing Fallout research, ironically enough – I'm like, 'Man, this makes me want to do a Fallout New Orleans so bad,'" Avellone says.

He continues, "The vibe was so cool. The flavor was so cool, and it's still Fallout, but it's in a different area that felt different. Yeah, there's still a lot of potential there." Avellone isn't alone in dreaming about Louisiana's heat meeting Fallout's fire – plenty of people are enthusiastic about Fallout 5 in New Orleans, including Fallout 76 lead artist and ex-Bethesda dev Nate Purkeypile, who said earlier this year, "Fallout 5 in New Orleans? I mean, that would get my vote for sure." I just wonder what Todd Howard thinks about crawfish.

Bethesda "lectured" Fallout New Vegas designer for saying the RPG would run at 30 FPS: "'Why do you have a f***ing engine that can't run 30 frames per second?'"

Don't hold your breath for a Fallout: New Vegas remaster akin to the treatment Oblivion got, according to Chris Avellone, because Bethesda apparently doesn't have the engineering chops to pull it off.

"I don't think Bethesda has the engineering knowhow to make a remaster of New Vegas at all," the prolific RPG veteran and New Vegas senior designer says in an interview with TKs-Mantis.

The main reason for Avellone's doubt is that "the very last milestone" Bethesda apparently gave to New Vegas developer Obsidian Entertainment was to "deliver all the source code and the ability to make the build" for a $10,000 cheque. Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart allegedly decided to skip that pay check.

"What that milestone really meant was if all those assets are given to Bethesda, that means they can recreate the game at any time," Avellone explains. A source code-less Bethesda might mean a remaster-less Bethesda, then.

But there may still be ways around the conundrum. Avellone agrees "one of the only ways they could do it" would be to wrap the Creation Engine original in Unreal Engine's visuals, not unlike how The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered went about it. The veteran game developer also said it would be pragmatic to "try out that process with Fallout 3" before jumping over to New Vegas "just to see what all the all the problems and issues are as a result."

Now that Obsidian Entertainment and Bethesda Game Studios fall under the same corporate umbrella of Microsoft, it's also possible the two could collaborate to unearth the game's source code. Although Avellone doesn't think sharing a parent company necessarily makes the two parties more willing to work together.

Improperly redacted court documents from Microsoft first made mention of the Oblivion remaster, which did eventually come to pass, and a Fallout 3 remaster, which remains to be seen, years ago Fresh off hints from Todd Howard, a more recent report also claimed Bethesda was, in fact, reviving its post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Bethesda "lectured" Fallout New Vegas designer for saying the RPG would run at 30 FPS: "'Why do you have a f***ing engine that can't run 30 frames per second?'"

Fallout: New Vegas has aged into a beloved RPG, but when it first launched it faced widespread complaints about performance, and specifically its choppy frame rates. To this day, it's generally recommended that you download stability mods if you're playing on PC, as the game was developed on the notoriously buggy, and even by 2010 standards, outdated, Gamebryo engine. According to a new anecdote shared by original Fallout: New Vegas senior designer Chris Avellone, there were some folks at publisher Bethesda that had an inkling the game wasn't going to run at a steady frame rate even before it launched.

"I had done an interview about the Gamebryo engine, and someone had asked me, 'hey, is New Vegas gonna run 30 frames per second?'" says Avellone during an interview with TKs-Mantis. "In my mind, it's inexcusable that a game would not run 30 frames per second, so I said, 'yes, it will.' And to my surprise, I'm in this Bethesda meeting, this tech director starts lecturing me about 'you shouldn't have said that.'

"And I'm sitting there taking it, and all I'm thinking back of my head is like, 'Why do you have a fucking engine that can't run 30 frames per second, and then call that your claim to fame and you're the director of technology?' It was so offensive to me. I sat there and I smiled and I took it, but overall that in itself was one fundamental flaw of the technology there."

To Bethesda's credit, it definitely took feedback about New Vegas's performance on board and officially switched to its proprietary Creation engine for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, a decision that likely avoided certain disaster. I can't imagine a game as big and complex as Skyrim running on Gamebryo, and I don't think I want to.

"I've known programmers that worked at Bethesda. They say the engine is all sorts of messes under the hood," adds Avellone. "But that 30 frames per second thing, like, that's on Bethesda, and I'm like, 'Wow I shouldn't be being lectured about that. You are the ones that should be lectured about it."

Avellone doesn't elaborate any further on that situation in the interview, but I can only imagine he felt a sense of profound vindication when he saw the response to New Vegas's unstable frame rates. Although, I suppose it would be a fairly dubious vindication considering he was one of the lead designers on the game and presumably felt a sense of ownership over the final product.

Fallout 2 and New Vegas designer still hates the series' Amazon TV show: "I had to shut it off within a minute"

Fallout co-creator Tim Cain has stressed the importance of not assuming what the players are going to do if your game is non-linear.

"Rule one, our game is nonlinear – don't assume that players will go somewhere first or talk to someone first," Cain explains in a new YouTube video titled Eight Level Design Guidelines. "I wanted to remind level designers that just because you put a guard outside the town, don't assume that everybody will stop and talk to that guard."

He adds that "if you want to force that, you can put a gate in the town that doesn't open until you talk to the guard, or worse, force the guard to go into conversation with the player."

But when it comes to that guard, if a player is given the ability to take them out from a distance, Cain notes: "I'm gonna go into that town without talking to the guard. And you may think, well, at that point, it's OK because everyone in the town will attack you."

However, he explains, "In general, I just like to remind level designers, don't assume anything the player is going to do in a particular order. Your job is to provide a nice map for them to play on and not make such assumptions."

Nonlinearity in games is definitely something that is an acquired skill. It will never not impress me when a game like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild comes along that will allow you to go and get into a scrap with the final boss the second you finish the tutorial. It's also one of the things that frustrates me most about GTA and Red Dead Redemption maker Rockstar Games, where the studio will produce one of the most expansive and deep open worlds ever made, but then have missions that don't allow you to walk 2ft off the main path. These sort of restrictions are clearly something Cain is keen to avoid, and you need only look at the likes of Fallout 1 and 2 to see that in action.

Fallout co-creator Tim Cain is "looking forward" to generative AI for games, TV, and his doctor appointments in dire predictions: "Like a game and you want more content? It'll just generate it."

It's no secret that games like Starfield and Fallout 76 stand out among past Bethesda Game Studios greats, shaking up the developer's usual formula for something new – and Todd Howard knows it, too.

The Bethesda boss himself admits as much during a recent roundtable interview. Our own Josh West posited that Starfield and Fallout 76 are more divisive than RPG gems like Skyrim, and Howard agrees to an extent – but that's not unique to them, as series like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls came across similarly different at first.

"If you look back at the beginning of Elder Scrolls, beginning of Fallout, they're a little bit the same," as Howard puts it.

"And then, you find an audience that loves that," he continues. "So, I think it's true that Fallout 76 and Starfield clearly – they're creatively different than what we had done [before]. And we really wanted to do that. When you're doing a certain type of thing for, in my case, 20 years, we want to try some other things and learn from that. We have ideas that we want to get out there."

That's more than understandable, I'd say – even as a Skyrim stan myself.

Sure, I've been waiting what feels like a century for The Elder Scrolls 6 now – but I respect that Bethesda opted to take a bit of a fresh direction with a space RPG like Starfield, even if it's not my own jam. It's got its niche now, after all.

As Howard says, "we're fortunate those games have found, in the scheme of things, giant audiences that let us keep doing things in them." Bethesda's community is all the more diverse as a result.

He concludes on games like Starfield and Fallout 76 that, "even though they're a bit off the core path of the single-player games that we have been doing, we're just fortunate to have the success that we've had with them." I'd argue that's a valid stance to take.

While I do hope Bethesda's back on its ol' Elder Scrolls grind now – which it sounds as though it is, as Howard previously admitted "the majority" of devs are on TES 6 – I get it.

It's never bad to try something new, and I'd be lying if I said I don't ever want Bethesda to give future ideas that aren't their usual Fallout or Elder Scrolls entries a go. Better than yet another Skyrim port, right?

As Starfield fans dub PS5 port "unplayable," Bethesda says it's "narrowed" the problems "down to a small number of causes" and is working to fix the RPG

Fallout co-creator Tim Cain says a world where AI generates games, TV shows, and even doctor's appointments is inevitable, and he's even "looking forward" to that future.

In arguably the veteran game developer's saddest "fun Friday" video ever, Cain envisions a world in which dead MMOs come back to life with AI-generated players mimicking real-life personalities, where generative AI makes Joey from Friends a lawyer instead of a struggling actor, and where you take vacations in VR. Yes, really.

"This particular video is me talking about what I think generative AI will lead to in the very near future, because I think this stuff is gonna happen fast," he begins.

In the broadest terms, Cain predicts AI is no bubble, saying "generative AI is going to get much faster and much better. It is going to become so better that it is going to be reactive to you in real-time across a bunch of industries, and therefore it's going to have to be regulated."

At multiple points in the video, Cain acknowledges the sensitive nature of generative AI being used to create content, but that doesn't stop him from saying generative AI will be used to create content. In TV sitcoms, he reckons, you'll be able to instantly change characters' professions and generate different settings in place of those you don't like.

"Imagine you're watching a TV on your smart TV, and let's say it's a sitcom. And you're watching it and you're like, 'Eh, I don't really like the main character, this mechanic guy, I want him to be a lawyer.' Bam, instant change. He's now a lawyer," Cain says.

"'Hey AI, I want the setting to be different' ... boom, setting changes. And also, now all of the jokes need to be changed cause there were a lot of blue collar jokes and I want a lot of funny, legal-esque jokes. Boom, those all change. While you're watching, it will change the sitcom to all of that."

Cain also predicts AI will be able to "generate new episodes" of old TV shows that have long since ended, and even transform old episodes into 2026-appropriate versions. Sticking with Joey from Friends as an example, just imagine the same Mr. Tribbiani that you know and love from the early '00s, but he's rizzing up high-key cute girls and blasting his co-stars with massive vape clouds. Just what people in their 30s who watched that show growing up have always wanted.

How will gen AI Impact games? Cain predicts you'll be able to change the very building blocks just like with TV. "You like a game and you want more content? It'll just generate it," he says. "Like a game but think it has a weak storyline? Change it. Like a game except for some of its mechanics? Change them.

"Just say, 'Hey, I want fast travel but only between cities. I don't want quest markers but I do want quest log.' Boom, boom, boom, boom, the game will just change right there immediately for you."

Cain goes on to say this will be especially handy for MMO players, in particular those who miss being able to play games that aren't active anymore. "Have an AI make a local server," he proposes. "Great, now you can play it again. Oh, it's empty? Fill it with AI players. Have it watch videos of people who have played that game and just fill it up with players, and it mimics their personalities."

Look, Cain is a veteran of the industry who was instrumental to one of the most beloved video game IPs of all time, but with all due respect, the idea of playing Ultima Online with AI-generated players designed to mimic the personalities of my friends who I used to play with... is genuinely one of the grimmest, most dire, dystopian realities I can possibly fathom. Likewise, my heart sinks at the thought of playing AI-generated stories with AI-generated characters that I can change however I want. That sounds like it would entirely rob a game, or any work of art, of its artistic intent. But alas, Cain reckons this is all inevitable, so get ready.

"It goes way beyond that, though," Cain threatens. "I'm looking forward to having my own personal AI diagnostician ... maybe I'd like a nutritionist, or a trainer, who's been with me for years, who knows my entire case history, knows what my goals are, knows, 'Hey my body didn't do well with intermittent fasting, but it loved keto.'"

"Figure out why, and offer me a diet based on that," Cain tells this imagined AI, "rather than just have a new nutritionist tell me, 'No, no, no, you didn't do intermittent fasting right. Let's do it.' We waste six months and bam, she's like, 'Huh, I guess intermittent fasting doesn't work for you.' 'Yeah, you're removed. I want my AI nutritionist."

Fallout 2076

On paper, some of these real-world applications are easier to swallow than AI mingling with art – though I would never trust AI with health advice, nor should anybody – but it's no less dystopian to imagine. And there's more.

Still moody about that trip you had to cancel due to weather? "Why not just do that trip in VR?" asks Cain, presumably imagining AI-generated beaches. Oh, why not throw 3D printing into the mix? Eventually, that could be used to generate your clothes, furniture, food, and possibly even water, so you'll never have to leave your house. Yay, I think?

"This is gonna be an interesting time," Cain says. "Some of the things I've described are probably gonna be here in a year or two, other things are gonna take a lot longer, but eventually this is all gonna happen. And so, yeah, it'll need to be regulated."

Oh, thank goodness, government regulation. We've all seen in the last couple of years how effective our governments have been at regulating AI even in its relative infancy, as it is right now in Cain's view. It's not like generative AI has become ubiquitous enough to spread misinformation like wildfire on social media or displace jobs by the thousands. Surely, in a much more advanced form, it'll be a lot easier to wrangle.

"How are creators gonna get paid?" asks Cain, rightfully.

Nuka-Water

Sarcasm aside, AI is already a massive problem for all sorts of creative professionals across many different mediums, including voice acting, writing, art, and design. If it becomes convincing enough to generate entire TV shows and video games that are passable or enjoyable – something that I simply don't believe is possible – that problem begins to balloon exponentially.

Cain's solution? "I think some of this will be handled by, you can make patterns," he says. "So you don't make clothing anymore, but you make clothing patterns that people buy, and when someone prints clothing with your pattern on it, you get some money, or credits, or whatever you use to do all this stuff."

It's difficult to separate Cain's predictions and wants in the video, but his tone remains almost eager throughout. It's a bizarre watch. Again, I'm really not here to rag on such a respected industry figure, but by Cain's own logic, wouldn't those clothing patterns be generated by AI at this point in the future? Surely if the technology can be used to generate complex projects or essential resources, it can create clothing patterns, too. Even if it couldn't, what about the voice actors? Writers? We can't all make clothing patterns.

"Video games are cooked": Publisher head says "it doesn't matter" how many of us hate gen AI, Pandora's box has opened and "it's gonna get used now"

Fallout season 2 has become Amazon's second-most-watched returning show of all time.

The streamer revealed that the second installment of the post-apocalyptic video game adaptation brought in 83 million viewers in its first 13 weeks on the platform. This makes it second only to Reacher, which accumulated 54.6 million viewers in just 19 days after season 3 hit Prime Video last spring.

What's more, 100 million people across the world watched Fallout as a whole in this period, thanks to more people tuning into season 1 to catch up ahead of the latest batch of episodes.

Around the time of release, it seemed like season 2 wasn't raking in as many views as the record-breaking season 1 (the first season had the best premiere for a series ever on the streamer), but that was mostly down to a new release schedule – all episodes dropped at once for season 1, while season 2 was released weekly.

Fallout got an early renewal for a third season in May 2025 and production on Fallout season 3 is expected to kick off this summer. With the Ghoul heading to Colorado and Lucy and co. heading to pastures new, the next installment is set to explore some exciting new game locations.

There are definitely a few things from the game that we’ve wanted to do since season 1," co-showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet recently told SFX magazine. "Now, it’s narratively the right time to get to them – but I don’t want to say more than that and spoil it."

Fallout season 2 is streaming now on Prime Video. For more on what to watch, check out our guide to everything new on Prime Video in April.

For many Fallout fans, New Vegas represents the upper echelon of the series. Obsidian's take on the wasteland is nuanced, grounded and a little darker than Bethesda's modern mainline entries. Former devs on 3 and 4 respect how Obsidian tackled the property, but they feel the comparisons can be a little unfair to what Bethesda achieved.

"I initially felt a little touchy about it," Jonah Lobe, a character artist on Fallout 3 and 4, says of fans constantly talking up New Vegas on the Kiwi Talkz podcast. "We made 90% of the art, we built the engine, we did it in a very limited window of time, and we put in all this effort, and they got to just work on the stories."

As such, he found it "a little unfair" because players were basing so much of their opinion on the writing, rather than the technical aspects. But time has tempered his perspective. "As time has gone on, Obsidian killed it," Lobe proclaims. "It did make me feel a little bit sad that our design team could not implement the same scale of really ambitious, multi-arc hug choices, kind of thing."

Nate Purkeypile, a world artist on Fallouts 3 and 4, concurs. "It would've been cool to see more of that versus the completely separate faction thing, which didn't really have the same sort of ramifications in Fallout 4," he adds. "I do think [New Vegas] is a really good game, but it also does some things worse. I think its dungeons and world design are not as good."

The conversation then shifts to acknowledging the hard conditions Obsidian was working in, with a compressed production schedule, and how the consensus has shifted over time. New Vegas launched in a messy state, recovering over years thanks to patches and community mods. All my completed playthroughs are on modded versions of New Vegas, rather than the version Obsidian put on shelves.

"Honestly, I applaud them, I think they did a great job of shepherding the Fallout spirit," Lobe says. "In some ways better than we did."

Todd Howard defends "VO line flub" in Oblivion Remastered since "it's part of the game’s character," but some bugs only stick around because they're "so complicated"

Fallout 3 artist Istvan Pely says the game's awkward DLC integration was something Bethesda wanted to make sure it got right when it came to expanding Starfield.

If you've played Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas after purchasing the Game of the Year edition of either, you'll be familiar with the DLC wave. In New Vegas, once you leave Doc Mitchell's hut and gaze upon Goodsprings – and by extension, the wasteland – for the first time, it's an impactful moment. Or rather, it would be, but instead you're treated to a number of pop-up notices informing you of the DLC content you own and the various radio signals you can follow to find them. The same went for Fallout 3, and while not the end of the world, it may have taken you out of the role-playing a bit.

Pely, in an interview with GamesRadar+, explains, "One of the things we learned, more than a decade ago, when you look at the Game of the Year Edition of Fallout 3 – we would make these DLCs, and then we put out a Game of the Year Edition – and the Game of the Year Edition would start with all of these messages [telling you] the DLCs had unlocked. We've gotten better at that."

So over a decade and a half later, with Starfield, "The beginning of Terran Armada is much more organically woven into the world." Pely explains, "You'll stumble upon that content. So it's entirely possible that you'll start the game, you'll learn about this, it tells you you probably shouldn't do that now, but there's nothing stopping you from trying."

How returning to The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion reshaped Todd Howard's stance on remastering Bethesda's RPGs