Bethesda’s Fallout 3 and Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas are reportedly both coming back for full remasters in the vein of the recent Oblivion Remastered, with reports claiming they aim for the same technical polish as that troubled release.
Both Fallout games are fantastic RPGs, although its clear that Obsidian’s entry is substantially more beloved, even if it took years for fans to truly recognise it. As a quick sequel, Fallout: New Vegas reused a lot of Fallout 3 assets, systems, and tools, and some Fallout 3 developers felt short-changed by the fact that Bethesda’s team barely ever receives praise for their work on the game.
Speaking on Kiwi Talkz’ podcast, via GR, Fallout 3 and 4 devs discussed the fan reception for New Vegas more than 15 years after its release. Character artist Jonah Lobe explained that, even today, “you always get those guys jumping out of the woodwork to say, ‘New Vegas is the best! Bethesda sucks!’, and I’m like, okay,”
“We made 90% of the art, we built the engine. We did it in a very limited window of time and they got to just work on the stories.”
Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 character artist Jonah Lobe
As so much of New Vegas is based on work that Bethesda had already done, some developers at the studio did feel that the blanket praise was “a little unfair”. “I initially felt a little touchy about it,” they said, explaining that Obsidian was allowed to focus almost entirely on its narrative and choice-based gameplay with so much of the foundations already built.
“We made 90% of the art, we built the engine,” Lobe continued. “We did it in a very limited window of time and they got to just work on the stories.” As fan reception over time focused almost entirely on the writing and not the game’s technical shortcomings, whereas older Bethesda titles are still lambasted for the same issues that are largely ignored for New Vegas, the positivity was a little hard to swallow.
Nevertheless, Lobe admits that New Vegas is a fantastic Fallout game, adding that the game does excel in aspects where Bethesda’s offerings do not. “Honestly, I applaud them,” Lobe said. “I think they did a great job of shepherding the Fallout spirit, in some ways better than we did.”
“As time has gone on, Obsidian killed it,” Lobe continued. “It did make me feel a little bit sad that our design team could not implement the same scale of really ambitious, multi-arc hug choices, kind of thing.” While there my have been some negative feelings back in the day, they’re all gone now.
Nate Purkeypile, a former Bethesda artist from Oblivion to Starfield, added that not everything in Fallout: New Vegas is better than Fallout 3 or Fallout 4. “I do think [its] a really good game, but it also does some things worse,” he said. “I think its dungeons and world design are not as good.”
While Fallout: New Vegas is a fantastic game, the team at Bethesda do deserve props for handing Obsidian a pretty fantastic base to start on. Now, more than a decade away from both game’s releases, both RPGs are pretty damn great Fallout games. As Fallout 5 isn’t planned to start development until after the launch of The Elder Scrolls 6 (which will occur around the same time as the heat death of the universe), thank Todd we have two amazing games to play until then.
