As far as some fans are concerned, Fallout: New Vegas is the best that the post-apocalyptic series has to offer. This sentiment is apparently not shared by series owner Bethesda Softworks, though — or at least, that’s what one developer who worked on the 2010 Fallout series spinoff claimed in a recent interview.
That developer would be Chris Avellone, a writer and project director on Fallout: New Vegas who was also instrumental in the creation of the game’s DLC. Avellone left Obsidian on bad terms with its upper management in 2015, later claiming that he objected to how the company conducted business. We now turn to a three-hour conversation Avellone had in mid-April with YouTuber TKs-Mantis, where the veteran game developer discussed all things Fallout. The exchange has been making the rounds on the internet due to a number of bold assertions made by Avellone.
About 30 minutes into the video, Avellone recounts the creation of Fallout: New Vegas add-on Dead Money, and the decision to push the game in the direction of survival horror. As seasoned Fallout fans know, Dead Money raises the stakes by making resources scarce and also depriving players of all their gear. After Bethesda revived the dormant series by turning it into a mainstream first-person shooter, Dead Money‘s harsh approach was considered a problem internally, Avellone says.
“Despite what I thought would be a cool examination of Fallout, it was so different from the core experience that it’s obviously a huge turnoff for a lot of people,” Avellone said.
Avellone went on to explain that critical reception mattered to Obsidian, as there were payment incentives tied to review scores. “Bethesda used review scores against us for the DLC,” he continued, while noting this was how Bethesda justified ceasing its creative partnership with Obsidian.
“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, OK, this is hugely morale-boosting,” Avellone said amid laughs. This apparently took Obsidian by surprise, as the studio believed that it had made a good product for Bethesda.
“You guys don’t seem very happy about it, despite the fact you got to reap a lot of the rewards for it,” Avellone said, as he pretended to have a conversation with Bethesda.
The direction of Fallout as a series has always been a contentious topic, especially after Fallout 4 turned the series into more of an action game than ever before. Some fans believe that, by chasing that widespread appeal, Bethesda has lost sight of the series’ role-playing roots. When this discourse pops up, fans often like to point to games like Fallout: New Vegas as an example of what the post-apocalyptic series should be. Now that the second season of the Fallout TV adaptation has steered the story in the direction of New Vegas, Obsidian’s approach to the series has only been further validated.
Both Obsidian and Bethesda are now owned by Microsoft; it’s also been over 15 years since the events described by Avellone. It’s unlikely that the two companies still carry any animosity between each other. It’s also worth noting that many people work at Bethesda, and whoever expressed a distaste for Fallout: New Vegas doesn’t necessarily represent the sentiments of everyone at the company. Bethesda head honcho Todd Howard has also repeatedly given Obsidian kudos for its work on Fallout: New Vegas, at least publicly.
There are other golden nuggets in the interview, like Avellone’s assertion that Bethesda literally cannot make a remaster of Fallout: New Vegas due to a lack of skills and source code.
