Obsidian takes on new Fallout and shelves Avowed sequel

The command of this eagerly awaited return to the post-apocalyptic desert is expected to be in the hands of Josh Sawyer, the director of the acclaimed Fallout: New Vegas and one of the most respected creative minds at Obsidian Entertainment. The journalist notes that the internal strategy is still receiving final adjustments from management and may undergo changes over the next semester. Before being assigned this new institutional mission, the veteran developer was leading the production of a new RPG, which featured an environment and mechanics similar to the radioactive survival aesthetic but was emerging as a completely original intellectual property. This original project was ultimately discarded heartlessly due to the publisher's new guidelines, which is disappointing for those who hoped to see the studio venture into new universes instead of sticking to the nostalgia of old brands.

This drastic backstage turnaround was unveiled by journalist Jason Schreier in an investigative report published on the Bloomberg portal. According to the correspondent, the plans to create Avowed 2 were progressing steadily, with the internal goal to officially announce the game by next year. However, the scope of the medieval fantasy sequel simply did not align with the new business model implemented by Asha Sharma, the newly appointed head of the Xbox division. Sources connected to the development disclosed that the new corporate leadership prefers to direct employees' potential towards brands with massive and immediate commercial appeal.

"In the end, the project didn’t fit into Sharma’s overall strategy," sources familiar with the game's development told Bloomberg.

Despite the dismantling of the original plan, the investigation assures that the direct sequel to Avowed wasn’t abruptly canceled. The solution found by top management at Microsoft was to allocate a reduced team of producers to keep the project's framework on life support, ensuring that the title could be resumed in the future if management changes its mind. This policy of shelving promising ideas to prioritize shareholder demands exposes the level of creative wear spread by the restructuring. To worsen the developer’s situation, the report confirmed that the company shrank and lost about 25% of its total workforce during the mass layoffs promoted by the platform’s owner, resulting in the quiet cancellation of multiple internal projects that will never come to the public's attention.

Not everything was slashed by the corporate accounting blade within the producer's offices. International media reports indicate that investments for the production of The Outer Worlds 2 and planned updates for Grounded 2 remain active in the official release schedule. Seeing the team forced to abandon their own ideas to adjust the parent company's calendar generates significant distrust regarding the remaining artistic freedom in the studio. Even though the prospect of seeing the creator of New Vegas steering a new chapter in the survival RPG franchise is fantastic news for fans of the retro-futuristic setting, the price paid with layoffs and shelving of original projects leaves a bitter taste and reveals the more predatory side of today's console industry.