Just lately, the subject of 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas and Bethesda artistic director Todd Howard got here up throughout a New 12 months’s Eve occasion I attended. Through the dialog, a couple of folks, myself included, joked about how Howard doesn’t like New Vegas, a Fallout recreation developed not by Bethesda however by Obsidian. Go searching on-line, and also you’ll see loads of others joking and suggesting the identical factor. Howard hates New Vegas. Or is at the least irritated by its success.
Right here’s the factor: There’s no proof that is true, and actually, Bethesda’s famed artistic director has acknowledged a number of instances publicly that he thinks New Vegas is nice. And but, this fantasy is so persistent that even I’ve to remind myself that it ain’t true.
So what’s up with that? Why is that this rumor so common and so broadly believed, to varied levels, by so many Fallout followers and players? And precisely how and when did it begin?
The historical past of the Todd Howard hates New Vegas rumor
Wanting round on-line, it doesn’t look like this was a subject till a couple of years after Fallout: New Vegas arrived. Particularly, after the launch of Fallout 4 in 2015, you began to see dialogue of this matter pop up on-line.
Here’s a November 2015 GameFAQs thread wherein somebody asks if Howard hates New Vegas, as a result of he doesn’t speak about it a lot, and folks complaining about Fallout 4 being worse than Obsidian’s spin-off. And I feel it is a key a part of this fantasy. Lots of people have been disenchanted by Fallout 4 for feeling much less like an RPG and extra like an open-world shooter. And at this level, sufficient time had handed that 2010’s New Vegas was extra fondly remembered as a cool RPG and never a buggy mess.
Over time, this opinion that New Vegas was good and Fallout 4 was dangerous has solidified on-line and helped persuade many who Bethesda and Howard should certainly be mad or jealous over the notion that their newest huge installment within the franchise pales compared to Obsidian’s rushed-out spin-off. This perception even helped gas the concept that season one of many TV present was eradicating New Vegas from the canon. (It wasn’t.) And now it’s easy to find people claiming Howard hates New Vegas online.
However if you happen to look again over the past 15 years, there’s zero proof that Howard and co. hate New Vegas. You’ll be able to, nonetheless, discover loads of proof that Howard doesn’t hate New Vegas.
All of the proof that Howard likes New Vegas
All the way back in 2010, in a Sport Informer preview of the then-upcoming Fallout: New Vegas, Obsidian boss Feargus Urquhart and recreation director Josh Sawyer have been talking fairly positively about working with Howard. Right here’s what Urquhart informed the outlet:
“Todd [Howard] was superior. I’d say generally I used to be extra immune to a number of the issues [Josh] needed to do than Todd was. Todd has a good way of taking a look at video games. It’s all concerning the participant. If we had concepts that we might all see would make it much more enjoyable for the participant, he was like, ‘Go kill that sacred cow—I don’t care.’”
In 2011, whereas answering fan questions on Fallout: New Vegas, Sawyer as soon as once more talked about that Howard was a “nice man.” Then, in 2013, Howard told RPS that he thought New Vegas was nice and he was open to doing extra with Obsidian.
In 2018, a small moment from NoClip’s excellent Bethesda documentary doubtless helped add extra gas to all this. The doc takes a small detour to speak about Fallout: New Vegas and categorizes it as a corporate-mandated choice, says there aren’t many New Vegas posters across the Bethesda workplaces, and appears to indicate that the studio was largely hands-off on the venture.
But in addition, in that very same 12 months, while speaking to The Guardian about Fallout: New Vegas and whether or not Bethesda would ever let one other studio make a Fallout recreation, Howard mentioned this:
“I wouldn’t say by no means. [But] now that our firm is so huge, it’s at all times higher to maintain stuff inside…it turns into much less doubtless, however I might by no means say by no means. I assumed the Obsidian guys did a superb job.”
In 2019, Howard reiterated in an interview with IGN that it was unlikely an out of doors studio would ever get to make Fallout once more, however as soon as extra praised New Vegas and clarified that the one studio they trusted to make the sport was Obsidian.
Jump forward a bit to 2024. Throughout an look on Kinda Humorous, Howard was jokingly requested by host Greg Miller about how a lot he allegedly hates New Vegas and the way Bethesda was eradicating it from the franchise’s canon by way of the present. Howard rolled his eyes after which mentioned this:
“First, I’ll say, they did an incredible job with New Vegas. We see a few of that, and I’ll say to everyone, that’s a recreation that we printed, proper? I’ll say Feargus, who runs Obsidian, is completely certainly one of my favourite folks within the online game trade…New Vegas is a really, essential recreation to us and our followers. We expect [Obsidian] did an unimaginable job.”
In December 2025, forward of Fallout season two on Amazon Prime, Howard informed PC Gamer that he had invited the Obsidian devs onto the New Vegas set to allow them to see it in individual. He added:
“After we went to do [New Vegas], we have been coming off of Fallout 3. We knew we have been going to do Skyrim. We all know the oldsters at Obsidian properly, love their work, and so we reached out to them and mentioned, ‘Hey, would you want to do that? We see one thing else coming off of Fallout 3.‘ That is what we requested them to do, proper? And so they simply did an unimaginable job on New Vegas.”
And most lately, in January of 2026, Howard reiterated that Obsidian was “the one alternative” for New Vegas. It was additionally revealed that the one mandate Bethesda placed on the sport was that it wanted to incorporate factions.
Even after studying via all of this, I think about there’ll nonetheless be individuals who will maintain believing that Howard and Bethesda despise New Vegas or are jealous of its success.
The factor is, I get why so many individuals will maintain repeating this rumor. It’s a very compelling story. Bethesda works actually exhausting on Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, spending years and years on every entry, but it surely’s Obsidian’s scrappy New Vegas, made in simply 18 months, that has gone on to be the fan favourite. There’s something nearly David and Goliath about it. However identical to that story, the concept that Howard hates New Vegas is a fantasy.
