Obsidian Entertainment co-founder and former chief creative officer, Chris Avellone, has said during an interview with YouTube’s TKs-Mantis that he doesn’t believe Bethesda has the ‘engineering know-how’ to remaster Fallout: New Vegas.
“Just really simply, I don’t think Bethesda has the engineering know-how to make a remaster of New Vegas at all,” he said. Avellone also added that he hasn’t played The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, but he had heard “people enjoyed some of the visuals, but overall it seemed the reception was kind of negative.”
TKs-Mantis offered that the rumoured Fallout 3 Remaster could potentially utilise the same method and that people want Fallout: New Vegas to receive the same treatment. Avellone replied:
Well, I mean, just pragmatically, it would make more sense to try out that process with Fallout 3 before going to New Vegas, just to see what all the problems and issues are as a result.
The host then asked, “And you think other than that, fundamentally it would be an impossibility for them,” Avellone responded:
Yeah, for one reason. The very last milestone for New Vegas was ‘please deliver all the source code and the ability to make the build and we’ll pay you, like, $10,000 for that milestone’. Now, what that milestone really meant was if all those assets are given to Bethesda, that means they can recreate the game at any time.
So, for reasons unknown to me, but I have suspicions, Feargus decided not to cash out that milestone and did not deliver it. It’s not a strange decision if you feel – which would not be out of the realms of possibility – that he felt that the New Vegas experience 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. I could certainly see that, and I’m not saying that’s the case.
Reports of a Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas Remaster have been doing the rounds for a while now. Back in January this year, a report on Windows Central stated that both projects are in the pipeline, and stated that Fallout 3 will be similar to what Bethesda achieved with the aforementioned Oblivion Remaster, while noting New Vegas is also happening.
In addition, last November, VGC stated that Fallout 3 Remaster is one of the “other things” that Bethesda’s Todd Howard mentioned the company is working on during a then-recent interview with GQ magazine.
[Source – TKs-Mantis via VGC]