Bethesda mengatakan bahwa 'identitas kreatif' Obsidian akan dipertahankan, hanya beberapa bulan setelah beberapa proyek dibatalkan dan mereka diminta membuat game Fallout

Listen, you can say what you want about Avowed—I wouldn't even blame you if you didn't like it, or much of what has come out of Obsidian's recent catalogue. There's even a tiny, selfish scrap of my gamer heart that's secretly very glad that Obsidian is working on a new Fallout game, again.

But this is pretty rich, given the grinder that Obsidian's been put through in the past few months. As a reminder, in July, 25% of Obsidian's staff was laid off during Xbox's ongoing, brutal "reset", totalling around 52 employees. When this happened, a sequel to Avowed was cancelled, along with multiple unannounced games. More recently, Obsidian's being folded into Bethesda.

Now, in fairness to Braff, it's entirely possible that this particular merging did not ruin Obsidian's ability to express itself. It's entirely possible that the post-bloodletting Obsidian we were left with in July and the one currently under Bethesda now are pretty much interchangeable.

However, the idea that Obsidian's creative identity has been respected by these moves overall is laughable—cancelling multiple projects is the opposite of that, actually. Making it work on a franchise it hasn't really touched in 16 years is the opposite of that, actually. And pushing it into a get-along t-shirt with Bethesda? I have a suspicion that time'll prove this move the opposite, too.