Jul 16, 2026 · 1 hr 22 min · 13 segments
Fallout: New Vegas game director Josh Sawyer will lead a new Fallout game at Obsidian, giving RPG fans what they've wanted for a long time, even if it's under less-than-ideal industry circumstances…
Ryan McCaffreyHost
Michael HighamHostMiranda SanchezHost
There have, there have been no, uh, dire follow-ups to everything we've been talking about the last couple weeks, but there have been a couple of very interesting follow-ups, and we wanna start with the headline topic this week, which is Obsidian's new Fallout game.
So this, this actually broke while I was recording last week, and I didn't see it, 'cause I'm just kind of in the, in the eye of the hurricane when I'm doing this podcast.
Uh, Jason Schreier broke the story over on Bloomberg, and so I [laughs] saw it later.
Bloomberg reports that Obsidian has scrapped plans for Avowed 2 and other unannounced projects to focus on a new Fallout game led by Josh Sawyer, one of the best RPG minds.
Michael can t- as soon as I turn the floor over to him, you can tell, tell everybody all about Josh Sawyer and why he's one of the best in the business.
Uh, Sawyer was reportedly working on a different RPG that was structurally similar to Fallout prior to this.
So I wonder if they're gonna try and maybe bring over as much from that to, to get a running start on this new Fallout thing.
Uh, he also served as the lead designer and project director on the aforementioned Fallout: New Vegas, one of the most beloved games in the franchise.
Bethesda, the studio that has overseen the Fallout franchise for nearly two decades, will work with Obsidian on the project.
A small group of fra- uh, of staff, pardon me, will continue to work on Avowed 2, with the hopes of reviving the project later down the line.
The news comes as part of Xbox's big reset, which has resulted in thousands of layoffs, in addition to Microsoft parting ways with a handful of first-party teams.
Bloomberg reports that, here's the, the real downside here, a quarter of Obsidian was laid off as well.
With no, with no disrespect to Avowed, but, like, if you ask 100 gamers would you rather have Avowed 2 or a new Josh Sawyer Fallout game, h- how- or is anyone picking Avowed in that scenario?
I wanna preface everything by saying, like, the circumstances in which this is happening are not great, obviously.
We've talked about weeks on end about how brutal this stuff is and how it affects, uh, real people's lives.
There have, there have been no, uh, dire follow-ups to everything we've been talking about the last couple weeks, but there have been a couple of very interesting follow-ups, and we wanna start with the headline topic this week, which is Obsidian's new Fallout game.
So this, this actually broke while I was recording last week, and I didn't see it, 'cause I'm just kind of in the, in the eye of the hurricane when I'm doing this podcast.
Uh, Jason Schreier broke the story over on Bloomberg, and so I [laughs] saw it later.
Bloomberg reports that Obsidian has scrapped plans for Avowed 2 and other unannounced projects to focus on a new Fallout game led by Josh Sawyer, one of the best RPG minds.
Michael can t- as soon as I turn the floor over to him, you can tell, tell everybody all about Josh Sawyer and why he's one of the best in the business.
Uh, Sawyer was reportedly working on a different RPG that was structurally similar to Fallout prior to this.
So I wonder if they're gonna try and maybe bring over as much from that to, to get a running start on this new Fallout thing.
Uh, he also served as the lead designer and project director on the aforementioned Fallout: New Vegas, one of the most beloved games in the franchise.
Bethesda, the studio that has overseen the Fallout franchise for nearly two decades, will work with Obsidian on the project.
A small group of fra- uh, of staff, pardon me, will continue to work on Avowed 2, with the hopes of reviving the project later down the line.
The news comes as part of Xbox's big reset, which has resulted in thousands of layoffs, in addition to Microsoft parting ways with a handful of first-party teams.
Bloomberg reports that, here's the, the real downside here, a quarter of Obsidian was laid off as well.
With no, with no disrespect to Avowed, but, like, if you ask 100 gamers would you rather have Avowed 2 or a new Josh Sawyer Fallout game, h- how- or is anyone picking Avowed in that scenario?
I wanna preface everything by saying, like, the circumstances in which this is happening are not great, obviously.
We've talked about weeks on end about how brutal this stuff is and how it affects, uh, real people's lives.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.