Lately, the subject of 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas and Bethesda inventive director Todd Howard got here up throughout a New Yr’s Eve get together I attended. Through the dialog, just a few folks, myself included, joked about how Howard doesn’t like New Vegas, a Fallout sport 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 in reality, Bethesda’s famed inventive director has acknowledged a number of instances publicly that he thinks New Vegas is nice. And but, this delusion 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 widespread 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
Trying round on-line, it doesn’t appear to be this was a subject till just a few years after Fallout: New Vegas arrived. Particularly, after the launch of Fallout 4 in 2015, you began to see dialogue of this subject pop up on-line.
Here’s a November 2015 GameFAQs thread by which somebody asks if Howard hates New Vegas, as a result of he doesn’t discuss it a lot, and folks complaining about Fallout 4 being worse than Obsidian’s spin-off. And I believe it is a key a part of this delusion. Lots of people had been disillusioned 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 unhealthy has solidified on-line and helped persuade many who Bethesda and Howard should absolutely 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 gasoline the concept 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 for those who look again over the past 15 years, there’s zero proof that Howard and co. hate New Vegas. You may, nevertheless, 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 Recreation Informer preview of the then-upcoming Fallout: New Vegas, Obsidian boss Feargus Urquhart and sport director Josh Sawyer had been talking fairly positively about working with Howard. Right here’s what Urquhart instructed the outlet:
“Todd [Howard] was awesome. I would say sometimes I was more resistant to some of the things [Josh] wanted to do than Todd was. Todd has a great way of looking at games. It’s all about the player. If we had ideas that we could all see would make it a lot more fun for the player, 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 “great guy.” 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 probably helped add extra gasoline to all this. The doc takes a small detour to speak about Fallout: New Vegas and categorizes it as a corporate-mandated resolution, says there aren’t many New Vegas posters across the Bethesda workplaces, and appears to suggest that the studio was largely hands-off on the challenge.
But additionally, 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 sport, Howard mentioned this:
“I wouldn’t say never. [But] now that our company is so big, it’s always better to keep stuff internal…it becomes less likely, but I could never say never. I thought the Obsidian guys did a fabulous 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 through the present. Howard rolled his eyes after which mentioned this:
“First, I’ll say, they did an amazing job with New Vegas. We see some of that, and I’ll say to everybody, that’s a game that we published, right? I will say Feargus, who runs Obsidian, is absolutely one of my favorite people in the video game industry…New Vegas is a very, very important game to us and our fans. We think [Obsidian] did an incredible job.”
In December 2025, forward of Fallout season two on Amazon Prime, Howard instructed PC Gamer that he had invited the Obsidian devs onto the New Vegas set to allow them to see it in particular person. He added:
“When we went to do [New Vegas], we were coming off of Fallout 3. We knew we were going to do Skyrim. We know the folks at Obsidian well, love their work, and so we reached out to them and said, ‘Hey, would you like to do this? We see something else coming off of Fallout 3.‘ This is what we asked them to do, right? And they just did an incredible job on New Vegas.”
And most not too long ago, in January of 2026, Howard reiterated that Obsidian was “the only choice” 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 arduous 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 Howard hates New Vegas is a delusion.
