Tim Cain, the veteran game designer known primarily as the original creator of Fallout, has returned to work at Obsidian Entertainment in a full-time capacity.
The announcement came from his personal YouTube channel, where Cain regularly posts videos about the games industry as a whole. The Fallout creator had gone into 'semi-retirement' in June 2020, after nine years as a full-time employee of Obsidian, during which he worked on South Park: The Stick of Truth, Pillars of Eternity, and Tyranny as a programmer, and on The Outer Worlds as its co-director alongside Leonard Boyarsky (whom he previously worked with on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines). Cain also contributed to The Outer Worlds 2, which launched just two months ago, but only as a creative consultant.
Now, however, it seems like his early retirement is over, and he's also moved back to Southern California to work in-person at the studio:
I should point out that I'm back at Obsidian. I'm their full-time employee and in person, so not remote. I'm not a contractor anymore. This means that I'm not working in other places, although there's at least one game that I worked on that I know is going to ship. I don't know if it'll be next year or the year after, but a game's going to come out that's not an Obsidian game. They'll have my name in the credits because I did work for it for it. There are other games I worked on. I'm not sure they're going to ship. The 2020 to 2025 was a weird time in the industry and a lot of games got started and a lot of games got cancelled. So, I really don't know the status of all the games that I contracted on.
I also can't talk about the project I'm working on at Obsidian just because, you know, that's covered under NDA. Don't bother guessing. You're not going to guess right.
A recent rumor shared by former Obsidian founder Chris Avellone suggested that the studio may not be planning to make a new The Outer Worlds entry, at least for now. That, coupled with the return of Cain, is more than enough to get Fallout: New Vegas fans hyped about the possibility of seeing him team up once more with Leonard Boyarsky (who also worked on the first two Fallout titles) on New Vegas 2 or another Fallout spin-off. However, Cain's tease that fans won't guess right appears to be a nudge that the project is actually a new IP.
Whatever the case, it's certainly great news that such an esteemed RPG designer, whose credits also include cult classics like Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura and The Temple of Elemental Evil (which is about to be re-released on Steam, by the way), is back at work on new projects. Obsidian has the ambitious goal of continuing to make great RPGs for the next 100 years without chasing big profits or turning into a massive studio, and Cain's presence will help keep them on the right course.
The team is also looking to satisfy people's hunger for deeper RPGs, as mentioned a while ago by the director of The Outer Worlds 2, and the return of the original Fallout creator will undoubtedly be a boon to that end.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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