{"id":1558057,"date":"2026-04-20T18:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T18:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/YiT3i4gM77VBpfU3pjXhoQ"},"modified":"2026-04-20T18:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T18:38:08","slug":"fallout-new-vegas-dev-says-dont-expect-a-remaster-argues-bethesda-doesnt-have-the-source-code-or-the-engineering-knowhow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fallout-new-vegas-dev-says-dont-expect-a-remaster-argues-bethesda-doesnt-have-the-source-code-or-the-engineering-knowhow\/","title":{"rendered":"Fallout: New Vegas dev says don’t expect a remaster, argues Bethesda doesn’t have the source code or ‘the engineering knowhow’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Fallout: New Vegas writer and former Obsidian creative officer, Chris Avellone, says don’t get your hopes up for an Oblivion-style remaster of the game, and his reasoning is a bit of a doozy. <\/p>\n

“I don’t think Bethesda has the engineering knowhow to make a remaster of New Vegas at all,” says Avellone in an interview with TKs-Mantis<\/a> (spotted by GR+<\/a>). That’s a pretty eyebrow-raising assertion, given that what the studio and Virtuous managed with Oblivion, but Avellone argues there’s a unique roadblock with New Vegas: “the very last milestone” Bethesda gave Obsidian Entertainment was to “deliver all the source code and the ability to make the build” for $10,000.<\/p>\n

“For reasons unknown to me, but I have suspicions, [Obsidian studio head] Feargus [Urquhart] decided not to cash out that milestone, and did not deliver it,” says Avellone. “It’s not a strange decision if you feel, which would not be out of the realms of possibility, that the New Vegas experience cheated him out of X amount of money.<\/p>\n

“In which case cutting off the revenue stream for that product for a time would be a possibility. I could certainly see that. And I’m not saying Bethesda doesn’t have the source code for New Vegas, they may have aspects of the code\u2026 but everyone that I talked to after that period of time said they had no idea how to reassemble it.”<\/p>\n

The idea that Bethesda doesn’t have the source code for New Vegas seems absurd: I’ve reached out to Bethesda reps to ask whether there’s anything to it.<\/p>\n

“What that milestone really meant was if all those assets are given to Bethesda, that means they can recreate the game at any time,” says Avellone. Things get a little thornier when you get to how Bethesda would actually approach such a project: the Oblivion remaster uses a fork of Unreal Engine 5 that somehow incorporates the original Gamebryo engine.<\/p>\n

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