This month at Game Informer, we’re highlighting our new cover story on Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds. We’re rolling out a ton of exclusive information on the game, but we wanted to take a quick detour and address a recurring theme we’re seeing in the comments and discussion surrounding the game. While visiting the studio, we spoke with Obsidian’s CEO Feargus Urquhart about fans using the existence of The Outer Worlds as ammo to attack Bethesda and the release of Fallout 76.

Urquhart says he’s surprised that some people assume the team at Obsidian would know back in 2015 when they started working on The Outer Worlds that the game’s announcement would line up with a negative reaction toward Bethesda’s Fallout 76 at the end of 2018. “People even said things about our trailer: ‘Oh man, just slamming it home to Bethesda!’ because we said the original creators of Fallout and makers of Fallout: New Vegas. We have storyboards from July that said that,” he says. “I have no ill will for Bethesda, I love playing Fallout games… We’re not fighting for the same dollars.”

“This isn’t meant to be negative – it can probably be taken as negative. We really enjoyed making Fallout: New Vegas and people really enjoy Fallout: New Vegas,” Urquhart says. “Bethesda is looking to take the Fallout brand in a different direction. There’s nothing right or wrong about that. That’s their choice. They own it, they get to do what they want with it. But in our mind, there are people that enjoy where Fallout was. That is what we wanted to do with The Outer Worlds, to give people that. And you know what? Maybe that’s a bad decision from the standpoint of the number of people that will buy it. I don’t know… People seem to really enjoy what Fallout: New Vegas was, so let’s give them an experience that’s as similar as we can to that.”

To learn more about Obisdian’s thoughts on fans comparing their game to Fallout 76, watch the interview below with The Outer Worlds’ co-directors Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky where they explain that they’re not happy with fans attacking Bethesda’s work.

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