Josh Sawyer would lead a new Fallout if Microsoft asked him to, but he would have to do it in his own way: "Who wants to work on a game where the thing they want explore is not possible?

Fallout: New Vegas occupies a strange place in the Fallout canon. It's widely considered the best of Bethesda's Fallouts, although personally I prefer Fallout 3. Many also view it as a sort of red-headed stepchild. No matter how many time Todd Howard denies it, some fans still have the feeling that Bethesda, which did not make New Vegas, would like to bury the game.

It's not surprising, then, that there are occasional hints of hope that a new Fallout game from Obsidian will be released. Would Josh Sawyer, who was the project coordinator, designer and system designer for New Vegas, be interested in leading the project if he were to take the lead? Well... sure. Sure, but only under certain conditions.

Sawyer replied "sure" when asked if he would be interested in leading a new Fallout game during a recent question and answer session. "With any project, I think it's about, 'What are you doing, what are your boundaries, what am i allowed to do or not allowed to?' I think with any IP, and especially one I have worked with before, I ask myself, what am I able to do this time, that I wasn't allowed to do last time? If the constraints are too restrictive, it will be hard to get excited about working on something that you can't do.

"I love Fallout IP. I think there are still many stories to be told and questions to be asked about... Society. But yeah, you're right, any IP is kind of the same. You want to work on that or that? I don't understand. What are we allowed and not allowed to?"

Tim Cain is one of the cocreators of Fallout. Cain was asked about returning to the Fallout series earlier this year. He said that it would depend on whether the project gave him the chance to do something new.

Cain said, "Every RPG that I've made has offered me something different and new that got me interested." "It was actually the game that made me want to do something new, because I've never done it before," Cain said in June.

"If someone said to me, 'You'd like to make a Fallout 3 game?' My response is: "Well, what's the new?" Why would I want a new Fallout when I didn't want to make Fallout 2? What's new about it?"

I don't believe it's likely that Sawyer and Cain will return to the Fallout grind. This is because Bethesda's RPGs are iterative experiences, which prioritize systems over narrative. This is not the type of thing that would appeal to either one of them. Dare to dream. It's possible that Microsoft could give the series to them and tell them to do whatever they want. But given the current state in the videogame industry, which is risk-averse, and focused on the big hits, I won't hold my breath.