Fallout: New Vegas Developer Chris Avellone Says Bethesda Doesn't Have "Engineering Know-How" for Its Remaster

New Vegas is arguably the most beloved game in the Fallout series, developed by Obsidian Entertainment in between Bethesda-made titles. Many fans yearn for a remaster like Oblivion got, but, despite rumors, NV's designer Chris Avellone doesn't believe this will happen:

"I don't think Bethesda has the engineering know-how to make a remaster of New Vegas at all," he told TKs-Mantis.

Apparently, Bethesda asked Obsidian to deliver "all the source code and the ability to make the build" for $10,000, so, according to Avellone, they could have the assets and recreate the game.

However, Obsidian's CEO, Feargus Urquhart, decided not to complete this "milestone." Avellone suspects that Urquhart felt that New Vegas "cheated him out of X amount of money. In which case cutting off the revenue stream from that product for a time would be a possibility."

As far as Avellone knows, Bethesda might have some bits of code, but no one knows how to reassemble it. So it looks like we won't have a remaster of New Vegas any time soon.

Microsoft now owning Bethesda won't help make sense of the code they have, Avellone thinks, because it's not one happy family, even under the same umbrella: studios don't cooperate just because they have the same owner. Moreover, some feel like they're rivals.

"In my opinion, Bethesda did not have to sell to Microsoft at all," Avellone said. "The issue is when you don't have to sell and the other person wants to buy you, you can make demands. And I very much imagine part of the demands [was] Todd Howard [saying], "Look, we can sign with you, we'll deliver our products to Xbox. We'll make sure that we're doing right by you, but you're not going to have any say over what happens with our properties."

Howard likes the franchise and cares about it, so "he obviously wants to keep some control over it." 

Whatever actually happened within Bethesda, I hope we'll get a remaster one day, at least to avoid downloading tons of mods to make the original game work properly.

Avellone discusses his career at length in the video, so make sure to watch the whole thing. 

We've also talked to him to learn about his approach to engaging storytelling, so read our interview to get an insight into his work.

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