He said that TKs-Mantis was “partially right,” going on to note that “there are certain things that were gonna take place in Van Buren that do happen during the time of New Vegas.” Despite this, however, “not a ton of” things from Van Buren affected the story of Fallout: New Vegas aside from “a little bit” of a planned plot point involving conflicts between the New California Republic and a “merchant mafia.”

“That’s why all those nukes go off, cause I’m like, ‘well, I need to destabilize some regions,” Avellone explained. “Like, not wipe out factions, but I need to shake up both the Brotherhood, I need to shake up the NCR, I need to have them even more at each other’s throats in California.’ And so that was the reason for some of the precursor decisions for some of the DLC stuff and some of the stuff in core New Vegas … When we still thought we’d be able to do a New Vegas 2, or whatever the title would be, but that quickly evaporated.”

As for the evaporated idea of a New Vegas 2, Avellone has said that it “will not happen in the next six years at least, if ever.”

In the same interview, Avellone had also said that a remaster of Fallout: New Vegas in the vein of last year’s The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is unlikely due to Bethesda’s lack of engineering know-how to make it.

“I don’t think Bethesda has the engineering know-how to make a remaster of New Vegas at all,” he said. This lack of know-how was reflected in the fact that, when New Vegas was still in development at Obsidian Entertainment, Bethesda had offered the studio a $10,000 bonus if it could “deliver all the source code and the ability to make the build.” This bonus was skipped by studio lead Feargus Urquhart.“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.

While a collaboration of this scope between Bethesda and Obsidian seemed unlikely in the years following the 2010 release of Fallout: New Vegas, both companies now fall under the Xbox Game Studios banner following a series of acquisitions by Microsoft. This means that there is potential for the two to work together to remaster the critically acclaimed cult classic open-world RPG.

March also saw a report indicating that Iron Galaxy Studios might be involved in the development of a Fallout: New Vegas remaster. However, the studio quickly dispelled the notion by revealing that any hints towards the remaster were merely a “behind-the-scenes” look at its preparations for team meetings, and that it wasn’t involved in any project related to the Fallout franchise.

“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.

Throughout the video, we get a look at the original combat system, which revolved around counter-attacks, and how it evolved and got refined with 2009’s Assassin’s Creed 2, 2010’s Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, and 2011’s Assassin’s Creed Revelations. 2012 would bring a major change in the system with the release of Assassin’s Creed 3, which gave protagonist Connor more weapon variety to fight with, as well as a bow. Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag would bring in another shift in 2013 with the inclusion of guns as part of Edward’s arsenal.

While much of the same combat system would be seen in 2014’s Assassin’s Creed Rogue, the year also saw another shake-up with Assassin’s Creed Unity, which made combat slower-paced and raised the difficulty. In 2015, the same system would be further refined in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, which placed quite a bit of emphasis on brawling with its two protagonists—Jacob and Evie Frye.

While the series would see a bit of a break after Syndicate, just a couple of years later, it would see its biggest shift in combat mechanics with the release of Assassin’s Creed Origins. The 2017 title introduced deeper RPG-styled mechanics, with weapons and armors having their own distinct stats and special effects, which could be used by Bayek in his quest to hunt down the Order of the Ancients. The same system would get expanded with the release of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey in 2018, which brought in even more weapon types as well as deeper RPG mechanics. The last game where we would see this system, at least for now, would be 2020’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which introduced a posture system for its enemies.

In 2023, the series would go back to some of its older styles of combat with Assassin’s Creed Mirage, with players taking on the role of Basim and fighting foes in the streets of Baghdad. Most recently, the franchise introduced further refinements to its combat systems with Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which provided two distinct styles of play thanks to its deuteragonists—the action-oriented Yasuke and the stealth-focused Naoe.

While Ubisoft hasn’t recently made any major new announcements for the Assassin’s Creed franchise, rumors have been flying around of a remake for Black Flag, which is believed to be titled Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. The overall themes of synchronization in the video would indicate that there might be a deeper connection between it and the much-awaited announcement. The company had confirmed that such a remake was in the works last month.

In the meantime, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has continued to get updates a year after its release, with the most recent one bringing in support for PSSR 2 on PS5 Pro, and mouse and keyboard controls on Nintendo Switch 2. Check out our review of Assassin’s Creed Shadows and its Claws of Awaji expansion for more details.

“They’ll set internal deadlines, and treat them like actual, external deadlines,” he said on the podcast. “It’s at that point you realize you’ve wandered too much, and it could be Sony tapping them on the shoulder, being like, ‘Hey guys, it’s been three years, not seeing much from you, we’ve spent I don’t know how much money already, what’s going on?”

Russell explained that the studio seemingly learned from its time developing The Last of Us that crunch is what it would take to make the games. “It was just an admission in a [meeting after The Last of Us], ‘Well, we’ve just come to realize this is what it takes to make games at our level,” he said.

“‘If you don’t want to do that, we understand, we’ll write you a great letter of recommendation.’ The company runs the way it wants to run; you either want to be a part of it or you don’t. They’re not technically breaking any laws. It’s not like a requirement. It is a, ‘hey, we really could use your help. Please come here.’ And you’re incentivized to do it because your bonuses will be bigger.”

A report from back in 2020 was one of the bigger ones to bring the company’s culture of crunch into the light. In a report, Jason Schreier—writing for Kotaku at the time—conducted interviews with multiple current and former employees from Naughty Dog on the condition of anonymity, and made note of unhealthy working hours and overtime work still being prevalent.

“This can’t be something that’s continuing over and over for each game, because it is unsustainable,” said one developer working on The Last of Us Part 2. “At a certain point, you realize, ‘I can’t keep doing this. I’m getting older. I can’t stay and work all night.’”

“They do try to take care of you, providing food, encouragement to go take breaks,” said another former Naughty Dog developer. “But for the most part, the implication is: ‘Get the job done at all costs.’”

It is worth noting that reports of Naughty Dog’s employees being forced to crunch are by no means recent. The company also came under fire for this back in 2011, shortly after the release of Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, with creative director Amy Hennig talking about how “it was the hardest thing in the industry [I’ve] ever done.” Similarly, cinematics animation lead Josh Scherr said that “it was pretty brutal this time around. I mean, there’s always crunch. There’s always people putting in extra hours. But this time around, just because of the scope and the ambition of the game – even after we had gone back and shortened some things, trimmed some other things – there was just still a lot to do, in the amount of time we had to do it.”

Intergalactic is being developed exclusively for PS5. While it doesn’t yet have a release date, reports indicate that Naughty Dog might be aiming for a mid-2027 launch.

This project would revolve around a man and a girl traveling through a broken America—essentially the plot of the original The Last of Us. What makes his post interesting is a mention of “the few stops that remain on the road ahead.”

“Cleaning out the garage today and stumbled on my original sketches from 2003 for a game pitch about a man, his surrogate daughter, and a trek across a broken America,” he wrote. “Been a wild journey. Grateful for every part of it, especially the few stops that remain on the road ahead.”

It is worth noting that the concept art itself doesn’t really mean much anymore, especially since the design behind The Last of Us protagonists Joel and Ellie would see massive changes since 2003, thanks in large part to the advancements in console hardware made at the time. As for the franchise’s future, while Druckmann could simply be referring to the 2027-bound third season of HBO’s The Last of Us, the fact that he used the plural “few stops” indicates that there might be even more in the works.

While he has largely been quiet about the idea of a third The Last of Us game, Druckmann had revealed back in February 2024 that he had some ideas for a third part already in mind. At the time, he noted that he only had “a concept” for it, however, and didn’t have a full story that would fit that concept. Discussing the ending of the first two games, he questioned whether there was potential for more.

“If we never get to do it again, this is a fine ending point. That last bite of the apple, the story’s done,” he said. “The great thing about working at Naughty Dog is that we don’t have to. So it’s always like, we would love another Last of Us, but if you guys are passionate about something else, we’ll support this other thing. Very privileged position to be in. I never take that for granted.”

“I’ve been thinking about, ‘is there a concept there?’ And for now years, I haven’t been able to find that concept- but recently that’s changed. I don’t have a story, but I do have that concept, that, to me, is as exciting as 1, as exciting as 2, is its own thing, and yet has this throughline for all three. So it does feel like there’s probably one more chapter to this story.”

More recently, Druckmann has been busy with Naughty Dog’s next major game—Intergalactic. While few concrete details about it have been revealed since its original announcement, Druckmann recently teased that we might see an actor from The Last of Us returning in the sci-fi game.

The news was dropped in a tweet on the official Battlefield handle, and came with a glimmer of good news: the PC version of the game has managed to escape the fate of its console counterparts.

If you didn’t get the chance to try it out back in the day, now might be a good time to boot up your old consoles and give it a shot. We found it reasonably entertaining back in the day, and its take on good cops taking a stand against drug cartels was interesting enough to warrant spending some time with its rather unorthodox gameplay loop.

In the meantime, Battlefield 6 is still going strong, despite a significant drop in players following numerous issues. Season 2 is currently underway with a new map and weapons in multiplayer, while RedSec received a new point of interest. Head here for all the details.

https://x.com/battlefieldcomm/status/2036110796921463224

Sources have indicated to PressOver that work on The Wolf Among Us 2 had started “from scratch” (via machine translation) at the end of 2025, and that it will be officially unveiled later this year and released by 2027. Interestingly, the report has also noted that, leading up to the sequel’s release, the original The Wolf Among Us will be getting a release on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The title was originally released in 2013 across PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Mp1st has been able to further corroborate the report, and the publication claims to have new evidence of the remaster or port of The Wolf Among Us. This evidence comes in the form of photos showing off the development of the game, with strong indications that the studio—rumored to be Trick Studios—is working on familiar environments from the 2013 title, like the Business Office of Ichabod Crane. The photos are fairly blurry, and also include a menu screen that bears a striking resemblance to the one from the original release.

While these photos might be an indication that Trick Studio is making use of assets and ideas from The Wolf Among Us for work on the sequel, the fact that Telltale has previously confirmed that The Wolf Among Us 2 is being developed using Unreal Engine 5 makes this idea quite unlikely.

Another key piece of evidence of The Wolf Among Us coming to modern gaming consoles comes from the studio’s official website. While references to both projects have been removed since they were discovered by Reddit users, the older version of the website is thankfully still available through Archive.org, and includes placeholder images for the sequel and the original.

The original developers behind The Last of Us have long-since left Telltale Games, having founded their own studio: AdHoc Studio. Co-founder Nick Herman had spoken about The Wolf Among Us 2, how the team had worked on it for a few years, and how no one at the studio has any idea about its ultimate fate.

“We wrote a season, Season Two,” explained Herman. “We think it’s better than Season One – and we were on Season One. And yeah, we’re really proud of it. We were doing tests. We were in cinematics and animation and stuff. And then basically they needed more time. “They weren’t… We weren’t running the project. It was Telltale we were doing it in partnership with. And we couldn’t wait around and do nothing, so we had to move on to Dispatch to keep the studio moving, and they needed to go their own way.”

“We’re looking forward to seeing what they do with it,” he continued. “I don’t know how much of our version of the script is going to make it into what they end up making. But if one day we were able to make the thing that we wrote and were in the middle of directing, we think people would love it. So, you know, good luck.”

Back in 2024, Telltale Games had also reaffirmed that The Wolf Among Us 2 had not been cancelled. In the meantime, The Wolf Among Us remains available to play on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. PS5 and Xbox series X/S can also play the title through backwards compatibility.

The tease in question was a “PLEASE STAND BY” screen that looks like it was taken straight out of Fallout: New Vegas, complete with the orange color scheme. However, in its new post, the studio has noted that it has used the same slide for its presentations every month, and that it has no relation to any Fallout project that may or may not be in the works.

“Nope! There is nothing to see here,” wrote Iron Galaxy Studios. “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.”

It is worth noting that the studio has chosen its words quite carefully, however. It never outright denies that it might be working on Fallout: New Vegas. Rather, it is more focused on stating that the “PLEASE STAND BY” slide is one that it has often used for its presentations.

Fallout: New Vegas was originally released back in 2010 on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. Owing to the forward march of technology, only the PC version is playable for modern gamers, especially since its original release suffered from technical issues that would eventually be fixed by community-made mods. While Xbox players can still give it a shot thanks to backwards compatibility, there will be plenty of bugs and stability issues.

While the original tease may have simply been a case of a misunderstanding getting out of hand, the timing of Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer also posting on social media that “the time for posting has ended,” and “the time of making games is upon me,” still raises some eyebrows. However, this is still speculation, and until Bethesda makes an official announcement, remasters of Fallout 3 and New Vegas are still simply rumors.

Just last month, creative director Todd Howard had referred to himself as being “sort of anti-remake,” noting that “I’ve softened on the whole remaster thing.” In an interview, he went on to say, “I respect the other [remakes] 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.”

He went on to reiterate that Bethesda has “multiple” Fallout projects in development. However, he didn’t reveal any details on what these projects might be.

In the meantime, Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition was recently released on Nintendo Switch 2. The title includes the base game, along with all of the expansions that were released for it throughout its life, as well as more options through the Creation Club. Bethesda is also continuing its post-launch support for 2018’s Fallout 76, with a new free update—The Backwoods—having just come out.

“Today’s our February company meeting,” wrote Iron Galaxy Studios last week. “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.”

It certainly helps that Iron Galaxy Studios is no stranger to working with Bethesda in some form or another. This includes its work on the Nintendo Switch port for The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim from, as well as the PC VR ports for Skyrim and Fallout 4 in 2017. The studio has also worked on Fallout 76, supporting Bethesda Game Studios in the development and post-launch support for the multiplayer game.

As for why Iron Galaxy’s tease is more likely to be related to Fallout: New Vegas rather than a brand new project, a similar orange color scheme was used throughout the 2010 open-world RPG, especially thanks to the fact that it used the Mojave Wasteland—set in the same location as the Mojave Desert in the real world—as its primary setting. This, along with the timing of Sawyer’s post, serves as a strong indicator that we might be getting close to an official Fallout: New Vegas reveal. While Fallout 3‘s remaster might also be in the works, it is unlikely to be a part of this tease since its primary color scheme uses green.

Since the release of Fallout: New Vegas and its DLC, Sawyer has worked on three major projects—Pillars of Eternity, Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, and Pentiment.

The Fallout series has seen renewed interest from the fandom thanks to the success of Amazon’s live-action adaptation of the franchise. While just about every mainline entry in the series is beloved to some degree, Fallout: New Vegas in particular has been considered to be among the best in the franchise thanks to its strong writing and well-developed characters.

Fallout: New Vegas puts players in the shoes of a courier for the Mojave Express who, while out on a delivery, is ambushed by a mysterious man in a checked coat and his thugs. Ultimately, the protagonist is shot in the head and left for dead in a shallow grave. However, a friendly cowboy robot manages to save you, and with the help of a local doctor, gets you back on your feet. It is now up to you to figure out who ambushed you, how you can get the stolen package back, and how you can finish your delivery.

Today’s our February company meeting. It’s time to catch up with what the company’s been up to and what’s coming up next for IG.

— Iron Galaxy Studios (@irongalaxystudios.com) 2026-02-26T20:56:28.220Z

the time for posting has endedthe time of making games is upon me

— Josh Sawyer (@jesawyer.bsky.social) 2026-02-26T15:42:49.853Z

“It’s a shame. I think a bunch of things happened,” he said. “The style of development we pioneered was being able to manage big teams by letting them be individual groups with ownership of their own thing, to allow us to make bigger games faster. But then I think with the recent boom, there’s been a weird five year boom in private equity and investment from people which we hadn’t seen before ever. So a lot of senior people left Ubisoft and started studios or splintered off. So there was this talent drain that went out.”

The departure of talented employees, along with the generally massive size of Ubisoft’s development teams all contributed to Ubisoft’s current state, according to Hutchinson. He noted that, with a team of 800 people, it becomes difficult to manage everyone. The pandemic-era work-from-home culture also played a role, he said, leading to junior developers not being able to learn and not asking questions.

“If you have a team of 800 people, it’s really hard to manage, even if they’re in the same building,” he said. “If they’re not coming to work, how do you police them? How do you make sure what’s going on is going on? And then juniors don’t learn because they like working from home, and they don’t like asking questions. So I think they lost that momentum as well.”

As for the lack of new IP, Hutchinson noted that, while Ubisoft still released several sequels, it also made new games that would explore fresh ideas. This, however, has been toned down quite a bit, leading to cancellations.

“They always had a history of sequelizing the franchises, but also having a couple of new things coming along. They became very allergic to the new things, and so they killed a bunch of our ideas, like when I was working on Pioneer. They had nothing new to come through.”

Hutchinson is describing a planned sci-fi game, Pioneer, that was meant to focus on exploration rather than featuring too much combat. The game was even teased in 2016’s Watch Dogs 2. Unfortunately, it never saw the light of day. While Hutchinson was taken off the project back in 2016, its eventual cancellation would come in 2019.

Hutchinson had also spoken about the long development time for Skull and Bones, despite the core sailing and naval combat mechanics being designed for 2012’s Assassin’s Creed 3. He said that it was “bizarre to see essentially the same stuff re-shipping 14 years after we made it.” Ultimately, he believes the title took too long to develop due to the fact that the team working on it—Ubisoft Singapore—simply lacked the experience needed to make a multiplayer version of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag.