Obsidian repeatedly declined by Bethesda to do more spinoffs for their games

The_Proletarian

The_Proletarian

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Some website called Level 80 or whatever brought attention to a tweet by Chris Avellone from February 2022 where he stated that Obsidian had been repeatedly declined to do more spinoffs for Bethesda games similarly to Fallout: New Vegas.

Chirs Avellone then quoted the article on X/Twitter and gave some more info:








Chris Avellone said:
This is true. One of the Elder Scrolls proposals (which I pitched) was intended to serve the same function as FNV did between F3 and F4, to provide more adventures in the setting during the years before the next Bethesda release.

I thought it couldn't hurt to try and push a similar system to what Treyarch/Activision had going with Call of Duty at the time (but hopefully less rushed). Bethesda could do a core release, then we'd release a TES title (in same world or a divergent timeline/era) before the next big Beths. push.

Probably less relevant now that Elder Scrolls Online is going, but at the time, it seemed to be something that could benefit both studios.

Not surprisingly, it didn't gain much traction - I never got the impression Beths. was happy with FNV's reception (good and bad).

That was one of the bad points, yes [how broken new vegas was at launch]. It had numerous issues at launch that we could have worked harder to resolve.

Yeah, a few [stories in particular]. If Beths. didn't want us messing with their core world, one was a spinoff where you adventured in an alternate TES world the last hero had failed to save in the last round of Elder Scroll titles. ;)

From Chris's verbiage, it seems like he thinks Bethesds would be resistive to sharing the IP.
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They did, but it wasn't 100% willingly, speaking as someone who was in the room listening while the "challenges" to sharing it were being discussed by the Bethesda heads.

Todd's a good guy and was always nice and respectful toward us. In fact, he would often say that we should check with him whenever anyone in his studio would say, "well, Todd said..." because chances are, he didn't.
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Bethesda hates the fact that New Vegas mogs their shitty fanfics to oblivion. They learned their lesson and aren't going to let a moderately competent studio touch "their" franchise and make them look bad as a result.
 
Eumesmopo said:
Bethesda hates the fact that New Vegas mogs their shitty fanfics to oblivion. They learned their lesson and aren't going to let a moderately competent studio touch "their" franchise and make them look bad as a result.
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It's too late to worry about that when the perception is already there. At this point they should let them do something even if it is some shitty spinoff to Elder Scrolls because Obsidian is just gonna be doing shitty fps rpg's and adventure games for now.
 
This just proves what I've always said.

Todd was never the asshole. Todd legitimately just seems like someone who, while he might have a different vision of what constitutes a "good RPG", just wants to make video games. But as he climbed the ladder at Bethesda he was forced into more and more positions where he slowly became the "face" of Bethesda and, at the same time, it's scapegoat. Think about this for a second. Whenever you see people shit talk Bethesda, have you ever, EVER saw such a conversation where someone didn't eventually bring up Todd?

The asshole - in reality - was always Pete Hines, the entire time. He has much more power in the company than Todd, and is the one who makes the majority of business decisions - especially whether or not to release a game early/polish it more before release. Look up who had the biggest hand in kicking Julian LaFey out of the company.
 
I'm more glad that New Vegas was a spit in the face for Bethesda because other people did Fallout better than they did and people knows it was more respectful to Fallout's lore. So Pete Hines was behind a lot of the bad decisions at Bethesda? Glad he's gone then, maybe the company could recover. I have my doubts but since Hines is out maybe someone will be open to letting Obsidian tackle another Fallout
 
Unsurprising that they proposed to do more Fallout games, surprising that they even suggested of doing an Elder Scrolls spin off!

I wonder if Obsidian's upcoming game Avowed is a glimpse at what could've been?

:confused:
 
I was more shocked to find out that Todd Howard has very little creative control in the process of a lot of the Fallout games. Basically he seems more like a goofier version of President Richardson if he ran a game company and not the Post War U.S. government. If anything it almost sounds like he wouldn't have really minded if Obsidian tackled another fallout game, if anything he probably would've welcomed it. The problem was Pete Hines and Emil Pagliarulo. I almost feel a little bad for the guy
 
People always flock to the "public faces" of a company. In reality probably not even Pete Hines has that much to say.
 
Pete Hines has no say at all for sure now, but I doubt he had any meaningful impact on the creative side before either. I mean, he was the head of PR, not part of the development at all probably?
 
People hate Hines because he said dumb shit about lore in a shitty game that has shit lore. Plus his writing sucks.
 
Mστh said:
This just proves what I've always said.

Todd was never the asshole. Todd legitimately just seems like someone who, while he might have a different vision of what constitutes a "good RPG", just wants to make video games. But as he climbed the ladder at Bethesda he was forced into more and more positions where he slowly became the "face" of Bethesda and, at the same time, it's scapegoat. Think about this for a second. Whenever you see people shit talk Bethesda, have you ever, EVER saw such a conversation where someone didn't eventually bring up Todd?

The asshole - in reality - was always Pete Hines, the entire time. He has much more power in the company than Todd, and is the one who makes the majority of business decisions - especially whether or not to release a game early/polish it more before release. Look up who had the biggest hand in kicking Julian LaFey out of the company.
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Nah... Todd is the CEO of the company, he makes all of the top level decisions. He could have fired Hines and Emil on a whim if he wanted to. As a matter of fact, the only reason Emil got all of his writing and design roles despite his extreme ineptitude for storytelling is because he was a childhood friend of Todd. He's responsible for the dumbing down of TES and Fallout more than anyone else.
 
The games are not made for the 5 angry fags at nma though so Todd is doing a good job by making money since that is his job not making games that cater to 5 angry fags at nma.
 
TorontoReign said:
The games are not made for the 5 angry fags at nma though so Todd is doing a good job by making money since that is his job not making games that cater to 5 angry fags at nma.
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Yeah, because Starfield sold 8 billion copies and won every GOTY award ever and RPGs with actual storytelling and complexity like Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3 were hated by everyone and sold no units at all.
 
Winning awards is meaningless compared to money. Cyberpunk 2077 was mediocre like the average Beth game and BG3 is not even the same genre.
 
If Mad Max, Fallout and Wasteland + others are to post apocalyptic scenarios, Waterworld and Bob Dylan are to global pissing down.
So when Holland and Louisiana are underwater Ark building and hustling for work as a gondolier/boat taxi will be the de rigueur of gaming and real life.
 
raynor009 said:
do we even want them to do another fallout after the not so great outer worlds
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This. People wanting Obsidian to make a Fallout game better prepare themselves for mediocre shit because that's all they do now. Most of the people that worked on New Vegas are long gone from the company at this point.
 
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