Fallout: New Vegas lead writer and Horizon Zero Dawn narrative director returns to Obsidian after 14 years, but swears "it's not" for New Vegas 2

Fallout New Vegas
(Image credit: Bethesda)

Fallout: New Vegas lead writer John Gonzalez returns to developer Obsidian after 14 years, but he doesn't want you to get your hopes up – it isn't for a New Vegas sequel.

It's simply "for exciting times!" he writes in the description of his LinkedIn experience. In parenthesis, he adds the unambiguous admission, "No, it's not FNV2."

But that won't stop fans of the apocalyptic action game from fantasizing. Last year, they guessed from Obsidian art director Daniel Cabuco's LinkedIn page that the "unannounced title" he described himself as working on might be another Fallout game… but Cabuco has since removed references to an "unannounced" game from his profile. And Obsidian hasn't revealed information for any game other than its first-person RPG Avowed, which is out in February.

Gonzalez might be trying to further obfuscate whatever Obsidian's "unannounced" game might be, or, more likely, people need to lay off the LinkedIn. Either way, Gonzalez's time off of Obsidian brought him an incredible range of experience. He was the narrative director on both Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, and, most importantly to me, co-developed the Orc's unforgettable dialogue in 2014 Lord of the Rings action game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. I hear a voice calling out "man-swine!" in only my most important dreams.

About his time working on New Vegas, which has now been out for 15 years, Gonzalez writes "Thank you, God" on LinkedIn, a typically godless place. With enough of this kind of passion, maybe there really is hope for Fallout: New Vegas 2.

After 4 years, Fallout: New Vegas' massive New Mexico mod is canceled: "Continuing forward simply isn't sustainable."

Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at 12DOVE. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.