Everyone loves a good rivalry; Rocky vs Apollo, Mr Krabs vs Plankton. But sometimes fans can get a little over the top when imagining such competition, as is apparently the case with Bethesda and Obsidian.
For the longest time, some fans held the idea that Bethesda wasn't a huge fan of Obsidian or its work on Fallout: New Vegas, because of how many Fallout fans hold New Vegas up to be the best game in the series. But Bethesda executive producerTodd Howard wants to assure everyone that there's no bad blood between the studios.
"When we went to do [New Vegas], we were coming off of Fallout 3," Howard tells me. "We knew we were going to do Skyrim. We know the folks at Obsidian well, love their work, and so we reached out to them and said, 'Hey, would you like to do this? We see something else coming off of Fallout 3'."
And they were right, between Bethesda releasing Fallout 3 and 4, Obsidian snuck in New Vegas, one of the greatest Fallout games—and really just games—around. But it was also something of a one-and-done. While people still talk about New Vegas, its story and locations haven't really been revisited, until now.
Following on from a successful opening season, the Fallout TV Show's second season takes the main characters to the iconic casinos and Deathclaw-ridden deserts of New Vegas. Characters also visit numerous places of interest that players will recognise from the game, many of which Bethesda pointed the showmakers towards.
Howard recalled visiting the New Vegas set and just how impressive it all was, but also mentioned to me that Bethesda devs weren't the only ones to enjoy seeing New Vegas in the flesh: "Huge respect to the folks at Obsidian. Had them out to the set to see this, and they've had just an incredible year, if you look at the year they've had."
Bethesda isn't upset that some of you like New Vegas more than the other games; it did invite Obsidian to make it after all. "This is what we asked them to do, right? And they just did an incredible job on New Vegas."
At the end of the day, Obsidian's win is Bethesda's win when it comes to New Vegas, as all it did was work to strengthen the series of games and beef out the lore of the Wasteland. But Howard does admit that he kind of understands where fans are coming from.
"I think fans debate what their favourite one is, which is understandable," Howard says. "I think it's great that you can have a lot of factions and the fans say, 'Oh, I like one or two or three or four, or Vegas or 76' now, and so I think that's really healthy for a franchise where people can say which one is their favourite."
