Bethesda lead Todd Howard says there was only one choice of studio when creating a new Fallout game after 3 – Obsidian Entertainment.
Over the last decade or so of no Fallout RPGs releasing, fans have conjured a theory that Bethesda is secretly upset that Fallout: New Vegas was the best Fallout game and decided that no one else would ever get to work on Fallout ever. And while a follow-up to New Vegas would be a welcome move given it's probably going to be 2035 at the earliest before we see Fallout 5 at this rate, I doubt there's actual bad blood between the teams. At the very least, Howard seems to appreciate Obsidian.
In an interview with Game Informer, Howard talks about capitalizing on the momentum of Fallout 3 while the main Bethesda team worked on Skyrim, which led them to Obsidian. "They were the only choice," Howard explains. "They had done something similar with [Star Wars] Knights of the Old Republic 2, and we knew them really well. We knew we were going onto Skyrim, the franchise was back, but we knew there was going to be a long break until Fallout 4 – how can we keep this going?"
Obsidian lead creative designer John Gonzalez explains, "There was Fallout DNA here; there were people who had worked on the original title, and then also the second game." Obsidian was founded by former Black Isle Studios and Interplay staff following the cancellation of the original Fallout 3, Van Buren.
Howard notes that the only instructions Obsidian was given was to work with faction-based gameplay, which the game is beloved for, as Gonzalez notes: "The thing that made New Vegas special was the ferocious focus on choice-and-consequence gameplay." He calls New Vegas "a very Obsidian-focused experience," explaining, "It's all about allowing the player to have tremendous amounts of narrative impact, narrative control."
Bethesda's Todd Howard says "we are doing other things with Fallout that we haven’t announced."
