14 years after leaving Obsidian Entertainment to ply his trade on games including Guardians of Middle-earth, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Horizon Forbidden West, Fallout: New Vegas creative design lead John Gonzalez has returned. But don’t get too excited, New Vegas fans, because he says it’s not for New Vegas 2.
“I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Creative Director at Obsidian Entertainment!” Gonzalez wrote in a brief message on LinkedIn (via GamesIndustry). Clearly anticipating what this announcement would lead to, he added in a quick note further down the page, “Back to Obsidian for exciting times! (No, it’s not FNV2.)”
Gonzalez played a big role in the creation of Fallout: New Vegas, to the extent that lead designer Josh Sawyer clarified his contributions in a 2022 thread on X. “John Gonzalez was the lead creative designer (effectively ‘writing lead’) on Fallout: New Vegas,” Sawyer wrote. “He wrote the main plot from Chris Avellone’s starting incident (shot in the head, dropped in a grave in the desert) and my end point (2nd Battle of Hoover Dam) .
“He created and wrote House, designed the families of The Strip, and wrote many major characters, including House, Caesar, Benny, Yes Man, and Vulpes Inculta. He also wrote Ricky and Stella in Honest Hearts as well as all of the Survivalist/Randall Clark logs.”
That’s an awfully big chunk of an awfully big game, and you can understand why fans might expect (or at least hope) that after more than a decade away, Gonzalez—who’s also earned acclaim for his work as narrative director on Guerrilla’s Horizon games—is coming back for the Fallout game fans have been demanding for years.
It’s a shame for them that he’s not, but take heart: He may not have returned to Obsidian for New Vegas 2, but some kind of undiscussed new Fallout? Hey, anything’s possible. (And we would like that very much.) Obsidian is also currently working on The Outer Worlds 2, which has a bit of Fallout flavor to it—that one’s currently expected out sometime this year.
