this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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I don't know how much of the Fallout: New Vegas group is still there. Fallout: New Vegas was done 15 years ago.
But the (mainline) series has also had successful games done by different studios. Fallout was Black Isle. Fallout 2 was Black Isle -- with the leads from the first game having left to join Troika. Fallout 3 was Bethesda. Fallout: New Vegas was Obsidian. Fallout 4 was Bethesda. Fallout 76 was Bethesda.
I figure that if there have been that many handoffs done successfully, they can probably manage to do another.
Here's a list of credits for Fallout: New Vegas:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/48717/fallout-new-vegas/credits/windows/
Obsidian was purchased by Microsoft, so both Bethesda and Obsidian are under that umbrella.
Looking at some of it:
Project Lead: J.E. Sawyer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Sawyer
He last did Penitment in 2022 at Obsidian.
Executive Producer: Lawrence Liberty. Looks like he's doing other things, last being Marvel Snap.
Producer: Mikey Dowling. He last did Inkulinati at Obsidian in 2023.
Producer: Jason Fader. His last credit is the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Lonesome Road, so I doubt that he's around.
Producer: Matt Singh. Last credited on Fallout: New Vegas, so probably not around.
Producer: Tess Treadwell. Last credited on South Park: The Stick of Truth in 2014, so probably not around.
Additional Production: Brandon Adler. He was credited with "Additional System Design" on Pillars of Eternity II at Obsidian, with some playtesting elsewhere after that. Might be around.
Addition's Production: Matt Rorie. No credits since Fallout: New Vegas in 2010, probably out of the picture.
Lead Artist: Joseph A. Sanabria. Last credited with Armikrog in 2015, so he's probably out of the picture.
Concept Artist/Vault Boy Artist: Brian Menze. Last credited with The Outer Worlds at Obsidian in 2019, so he might still be around.
World Building Expert: Scott Everts. Ditto.
User Interface Artist: Jason Sereno. Last credited on New Tales From the Borderlands from Gearbox in 2022, so he's probably elsewhere.
Character Artist: Daniel Alpert. Last credited for Pemitent at Obsidian, so probably available.
Character Artist: Aaron Brown. Last credited for Planescape: Torment -- Enhanced Edition at Beamdog, so he's probably elsewhere.
Character Artist: Kevin Manning. Last credited for Red Faction: Guerrilla - Re-Mars-tered at Volition in 2018, so he's elsewhere and may out of the game.
Environment Artist: Cochey Cantu. Last credited for LEGO 2k Drive at Visual Concepts Entertainment in 2023, so he's probably elsewhere.
Artist: Roger Chang. Last credited on Marvel Spider-Man 2 at Insomiac in 2023, so he's probably elsewhere.
I dunno. I'm not gonna go through the whole list, but I'd say from that sample that while there are still a number of Fallout: New Vegas people around at Obsidian, approximately 2/3rds are elsewhere.
EDIT: It does look like two of the three Troika guys from Fallout 1, Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, are at Obsidian as well. The third, Jason Anderson, is at inXile, which Microsoft also acquired, and has done at least some work on the Wasteland series there (the series that inspired Fallout originally).
EDIT 2: And Ron Perlman, the narrator for Fallout: New Vegas, appears to still be doing voice acting projects for various movies and games, though he's 74 and I dunno how much more work he's got left in him.
You forget the fact that if Obsidian were given the keys to Fallout again, I doubt they’d have much trouble enticing back the critical talent they would want back from FO:NV. Heck, who wouldn’t want to jump back into the series and do right by it given the fandom that has just come on board and the fandom still rooting for NV all these years later.
Well they’re still making good games that fit the same vibe like Outer Worlds. So the talent is definitely still there.
I wasn't actually a huge fan of The Outer Worlds, didn't really click for me. I mean, yeah, it's got a lot of similar elements to the Fallout series, but it's got some important stuff missing that's part of what makes Fallout interesting for me. It wasn't terrible, but it just wasn't Fallout for me...kinda felt like I was slogging through the thing.
Not much to stumble on in the world outside the cities. Fallout tended to work by having one constantly "stumble across" things in the world, kinda kept up a seamless flow of new things happening. I'll add that I think that the lack of this is part of what some people didn't like with Starfield -- one can run into things when jumping into a system, but feels more artificial and "gamey".
It's technically open-world, but there's little reason to backtrack. I played it in mostly linear fashion.
The perks are a big part of Fallout for me, the interesting character-building. You can choose neat things that interact and substantially change how one plays. The Outer Worlds perks are nearly all minor stat tweaks.
Aside from the handful of science weapons, most of the weapons in The Outer Worlds play in pretty much the same way, aren't that memorable. Maybe one gets a slight buff relative to the other. Not a lot of interesting characteristics or story around them the way there is, say, Ratslayer.
I realize that this is subjective, but Fallout has historically had moments that the designers made impressive and memorable to me, where one said "wow" the first time through. For me, some were Liberty Prime being activated and the subsequent mission in Fallout 3, maybe the Brotherhood of Steel airships arriving in Fallout 4, or the godrays shining through the gratings at ArcJet Systems in the A Call To Arms mission. There wasn't really a point where The Outer Worlds did that for me. Everything felt more-or-less like what I'd expect in the runup to the mission, didn't really have "wow" moments.
There were some things that I liked about The Outer Worlds relative to the Fallout series:
I found it to be pretty stable and bug-free. Fallout has improved recently, and if one counts it, Starfield was quite good, but historically, the whole series has often had a lot of bugs, especially at release.
There were story-altering choices. Not quite as much as Fallout: New Vegas, but more than, say, Fallout 76.