I got this sent from Bethesda today. My response was, WTF?
March 31, 2005 (Rockville, MD) --Bethesda Softworks® is
pleased to announce that we have hired the talents of Obsidian
Entertainment® to develop and design a Fallout® sequel. The return of
this exceptional series is aimed at the core fans of Fallout®, because the company are confident that the game's appeal will extend to a much
broader audience. "In this day when good role-playing games are rare, our releases of Fallout 3® and Fallout 4® promise to deliver what
gamers have been yearning to play for ages", said Todd Howard, Bethesda®'s
Executive Producer. "While we wanted to make Fallout 3® our own
game, we thought that the previous, cancelled attempt at it was a great idea, so we're finally giving the Obsidian® team a chance to finish it."
Howard continued, "As fellow gamers and fans of the Fallout series, we are
fortunate to have the talents of the original developers of
Fallout and Fallout 2 creating a worthy sequel to Fallout and we are
confident that Obsidian Entertainment will deliver a game that will be
remembered for years to come."
The sequel to Fallout 3, previously codenamed "Van
Buren" during its development at Interplay Entertainment® is to resume development at
Obsidian Entertainment under the currently given title of "Fallout 4",
which may be subject to change. The game is to be produced by Bethesda
Softworks LLC (www.bethsoft.com), a Zenimax Media (www.zenimax.com) company.
I'll try and get more news on this. It seems completely out of the blue
to me, though I guess it puts Feargus Urquhart's acquisition of the
original texture sets for the Fallout games in a different light. Did
he get the Van Buren stuff as well?