The creative design lead and lead writer of 2010's Fallout: New Vegas has returned to the studio that made it. John Gonzalez announced he’s rejoined Obsidian Entertainment as creative director, just as the Xbox studio prepares for its biggest year yet with the launch of fantasy RPG Avowed and New Vegas spiritual spin-off The Outer Worlds 2.
“Back to Obsidian for exciting times! (No, it’s not FNV2.)!” he wrote in his updated LinkedIn profile this week. Gonzalez was previously at the Barcelona-based NetEase startup Fantastic Pixel Castle working on an MMO codenamed Ghost. “Truly a privilege to work with this incredibly kind and talented team. But a new opportunity arose that I straight-up couldn’t resist,” reads a description of his time at the studio.
Gonzalez’s contributions to Fallout: New Vegas, whose open-world RPG storytelling and quest design remain a series high-water mark for many fans, make his return to the Xbox studio notable. He spent most of the last decade at PlayStation first-party studio Guerrilla Games where he spent hundreds of hours crafting the Horizon Zero Dawn universe, which similarly left a lasting impression on players with its sci-fi mysteries and Twilight Zone-like twists.
Obsidian has been one of Microsoft’s most prolific studios since it was acquired back in 2018. The Outer Worlds launched the following year, an RPG shooter which exchanged Fallout’s grim wasteland for a satirical sci-fi setting in far-off corporate space colonies. It’s since been followed by survival sim Grounded and the Renaissance detective RPG Pentiment, with Avowed arriving next month and The Outer Worlds 2 expected by the end of the year. The studio has also been helping the State of Decay 3 team with its open world tech. That’s a lot!
While Gonzalez was quick to silence fan speculation that he might be working on a long-requested Fallout: New Vegas sequel, which wouldn’t have been completely shocking considering what transpired in the first season of the Fallout TV show, it’ll be interesting to see what he does end up working on at Obsidian. Will it be the team’s next big RPG franchise, or a completely different genre mash-up that explores new territory for the studio? I’ll be happy with whatever it might be, as long as it arrives sometime this decade.
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