Todd Howard Talks Fallout: New Vegas And How It'll Impact The TV Series

With Fallout seeing a new wave of interest thanks to Amazon Prime Video's recent Fallout TV series, Todd Howard has been reflecting on the franchise as a whole. In a recent interview, Howard clarified his thoughts on the Obsidian-developed Fallout: New Vegas, and spoke about how it might be reflected in the next season of the TV show.

Speaking on a livestreamed interview with Kinda Funny Games, Howard clarified that he thinks Obsidian "did an amazing job with New Vegas." Responding to rumors that he hates New Vegas, Obsidian, and wants to retcon the events of the game, Howard said: "We see some of that, and I'll say to everybody, that's a game that we published, right? I will say Fergus, who runs Obsidian, is absolutely one of my favorite people in the video game industry."

When asked whether Obsidian and Bethesda might be likely to collaborate again now both are owned by Microsoft, Howard said: "I can't speak to things that we're doing with the franchise in the future, obviously, but New Vegas is a very very important game to us and our fans, we think they did an incredible job."

After already having to clarify that the show didn't actually retcon the events of New Vegas, Howard went on to talk more about the game's impact on the show. "If anything, the show is leaning into the events [of New Vegas]. Season two is gonna be featuring some of New Vegas, and we're careful about maintaining the key events of that game and the content in it."

"It is obviously difficult to deal with, when you're going back to an area where a game had multiple endings, you know? We have some answers there, but ... it's hard to sort of canonize or say 'this is exactly how that game ended,' and so whenever we can I like to avoid it," Howard elaborated on the difficulties of bringing New Vegas to the screen. "Like, don't refute anything that happened. Be careful when you're specific about what happened. We want that game and what the players did to be their reality and true."