Fallout New Vegas dev says Bethesda doesn't 'care' about series' roots

A Fallout New Vegas developer claims Bethesda doesn't "care" about the franchise's roots but that the studio does not "hate" it.

There's a conspiracy theory that Bethesda hates Fallout New Vegas, which is regarded by fans as one of the best entries in the series because of its writing, deep RPG (role-playing game) mechanics and player freedom, as it was made by Obsidian and not themselves.

Bethesda CEO Todd Howard shut down this theory when asked about it.

"When we went to do that game, we were coming off of Fallout 3, we knew we were going to do Skyrim, we know the folks at Obsidian well, love their work and we reached out to them and said 'hey, would you like to do this?'" he recently said in an interview with PC Gamer.

"I think it's really healthy for a franchise where people can say which one is their favourite but huge respect for the folks at Obsidian. This is something we asked them to do and they just did an incredible job with the game."

But Fallout New Vegas writer and designer, and co-founder of Obsidian, Chris Avellone took aim at Bethesda in a series of posts on X / Twitter.

He was asked about the conspiracy theory of Bethesda being against Fallout New Vegas, to which he replied: "I don't think Bethesda hates Fallout, they just don't fully understand its roots and arguably, don't care - they own the franchise and they just want to do their spin on Fallout and make that the norm."

Avellone followed up with more posts that said: "This usually translates into a colourful, shallow theme park (with some interesting DLC exceptions, like Far Harbour, Point Lookout - and I was one of the ones who liked The Pitt) - still, theme parks are fun for some folks, so if people enjoy it, that's fine with me.

"As for me, I don't hate Bethesda, there are things they do well (open world exploration) and there are things they do badly (telling linear stories in open world games and their inability to understand how to use the Speech skill). But every developer has their pros and cons."

Elsewhere from indy100:

• Fallout 3 remaster and New Vegas remake details 'revealed' by insiders
• Fallout 5 could be 600 hours but gamers are worried

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