“I don’t think Bethesda has the engineering know-how to make a remaster of New Vegas at all,” said Avellone when asked about a potential remaster. This comes down to Bethesda offering Obsidian Entertainment a $10,000 bonus if they could “deliver all the source code and the ability to make the build”. The bonus was eventually skipped by studio head Feargus Urquhart at the time.

“What that milestone really meant was if all those assets are given to Bethesda, that means they can recreate the game at any time,” he explained.

It is worth noting that, since then, both Bethesda and Obsidian Entertainment have been acquired by Microsoft. With both studios working under the same banner, the chances for collaboration to make Fallout: New Vegas for modern platforms certainly exist. If it does happen, Avellone has noted that it would be better if Bethesda were to “try out that process with Fallout 3” to better equip itself to deal with potential engine issues.

Last month saw rumors about Fallout: New Vegas getting remastered heating up, thanks to a social media post by Iron Galaxy Studios. The post featured the iconic “PLEASE STAND BY” screen from the Fallout franchise, with its color scheme matching that of New Vegas.

“Today’s our February company meeting,” wrote Iron Galaxy Studios at the time. “It’s time to catch up with what the company’s been up to and what’s coming up next for IG.” This post was followed up by Josh Sawyer—the director for the original Fallout: New Vegas—with his own social media post about how “the time for posting has ended,” and “the time of making games is upon me.”

Eventually, however, the studio had to once more take to social media to clear the air and confirm that it was not involved in a Fallout-based project.

“Nope! There is nothing to see here. Sorry to disturb the volcanoes, but that was just a BTS look at our company meeting. We use that slide every month and has nothing to do with anything Fallout being worked on. As you can imagine, we love Fallout, too. Now pardon us as we retreat back into our vault.”

Fallout: New Vegas was originally released back in 2010 on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. Rather than picking things up where Fallout 3 left off, the title instead focused on the wasteland in and around the Nevada desert, which included the city of Las Vegas as one of its key locations. Despite suffering from many technical issues, Fallout: New Vegas was highly praised for its setting, characters, and writing.

While creative director Todd Howard said nothing about their existence, he has confessed to being “sort of anti-remake.” “I’ve softened on the whole remaster thing,” he told Kinda Funny Games. “I’m sort of anti-remake. I respect the other ones out there, but I really think the age of a game is part of what it is and its personality and what it represented when it came out.”

The studio seemingly looked through its extensive back catalogue when deciding on which one to remaster, and Oblivion just so happened to be “the right one.” “It was, ‘I definitely want it to be a remaster, but the absolute best version of that you can imagine,'” he adds. “So it was important to us that the original game was running, so imagine you had patched that game many, many, many times for many years, what would you have done?”

Howard also insisted that the overall visual style remained. “Let’s just make it look modern but still in the style it was. We’re not going to redesign the armor to be something new in The Elder Scrolls. It’s like that version of it looking the way you remember it, but up-resed.”

And of course, for those keeping track, he once again revealed that “multiple” Fallout projects are currently in development. How many remains unknown, sadly.

However, Howard’s stance on favoring remasters over remakes follows reports about Fallout 3’s alleged re-release. Rumors suggested that it would receive the Oblivion Remastered treatment, with a follow-up claiming that it’s “still in active development.” When it could be released is anyone’s guess, but Bethesda is apparently “keen to ensure it’s as well polished” as its shadow-dropped mega hit.

As for Fallout 5, Howard recently suggested that it would “have its time,” but dropped a more concrete tidbit last year. It will “exist” in a world where the events of Amazon’s Fallout “have happened or are happening.” Vague as that sounds, it suggests that the television series’ events could have some impact on the game’s story, if not occur in parallel. Time will tell, of course, and unfortunately, we’ll have to wait quite a long time indeed to know for sure.