During an event to show off its third-party 2009 lineup, Bethesda also announced that a new Fallout title, Fallout: New Vegas (note the lack of a number, we'll get to that later), will be released next year for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. Following the surprise announcement of a new title so soon, the second surprise is that Bethesda is not developing the title. Instead, Obsidian Entertainment, the studio behind Knights of the Old Republic II and Neverwinter Nights II (and its expansions), will be working on New Vegas.

Bethesda Vice-President of PR and Marketing Pete Hines stressed, "This is not a sequel to Fallout 3, and this won't impact whatever Todd Howard and his group over at Bethesda Softworks are working on. This is just another Fallout title." He further elaborated that New Vegas is still an RPG, and will impart the same feel and experience as Fallout 3; "it won't be a different type of game like Fallout Tactics or Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel were," Hines commented.

This is a really fitting developer-to-publisher relationship, as Obsidian is made up of many veterans from Interplay's Black Isle studio -- the same studio that was responsible for the first two Fallout titles. Even though it's a ways off ("next year" is a pretty large and vague release period), the fact that Obsidian is making a true RPG in the Fallout universe is enough to make us officially optimistic about the game.

1UP