An overlooked tweet from two years ago from renowned game designer Chris Avellone reveals that Bethesda rejected proposals for two of the studio’s most popular game series. Read on to learn more.
Bethesda Rejected Spin-Off Ideas For Fallout and Elder Scrolls
New Vegas Controversy
Fallout New Vegas (FNV) stands proud as the only narrative-driven spin-off in the Fallout and Elder Scrolls universes, excluding the online experiences of Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls Online. Not only that, it garnered a metacritic score of 84, despite its controversial release. FNV had a short development cycle of only 18 months before they released the game.
While it did receive a good score of 84, fans were outraged since the game could’ve done even better if it was allotted more time and resources. Fallout New Vegas was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, and published by Bethesda. Because of FNV’s success, fans were awaiting a sequel to the award-winning game. However, it never came and fans theorized that it may be because Bethesda was not able to stomach that a separate studio’s take on their game franchise did better than their own products.
Numerous Spin-Off Rejections
As unearthed by Twitter (X) user @nuke_lea, an almost two-year old tweet from Chris Avellone, a renowned game developer who also worked on Fallout 2 and FNV, revitalized the theory. Although it doesn’t confirm anything other than proposed spin-offs being rejected, it makes you wonder why not even one of these were brought to life.
This got Avellone’s attention as he recently just confirmed how Bethesda rejected his numerous proposals. According to the developer, he proposed an Elder Scrolls spin-off that serves a purpose somewhat like Fallout New Vegas, where there’s an entry in between two mainline titles. Given Skyrim’s overwhelming popularity and fans have long awaited a sequel, a spin-off would have undoubtedly earned millions.
It has been a decade since this issue, so it’s unlikely that we’ll ever know why all these ideas were turned down. It could be because of financial or manpower constraints, or it could be the theory we explained above.
