Fallout 4 and New Vegas veterans team up to make new open world RPG Wyrdsong

pcgamer.com:

For years Fallout fans have been clamoring for another team-up between Bethesda and Obsidian Entertainment to produce a new Fallout game. That's still not in the cards (despite Microsoft now owning both studios), but an announcement at Gamescom's Opening Night Live might be the next best thing.

Bethesda veteran Jeff Gardiner, lead producer and project lead on open world RPGs like Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76, has formed a new game development studio called Something Wicked Games. Joining Gardiner is Charles Staples, design director on Obsidian Entertainment's The Outer Worlds and lead level designer on Fallout: New Vegas. That's a lot of Fallout DNA in one studio.

Along with the announcement came an animated teaser trailer for the new studio's first game, and it's not a Fallout-like post-apocalyptic shooter. Something Wicked is making a gothic RPG called Wyrdsong, which is a «dark preternatural, semi-historical open world RPG set in Middle Ages Portugal,» Gardiner told me during a Zoom call last week.

Details about Wyrdsong (pronounced 'weerd-song') are pretty sparse at the moment. The game is in «early pre-production» and Gardiner isn't ready to share much more about it. While it's being built in Unreal Engine 5, he wouldn't even confirm if it's a singleplayer game. He did open up a bit about the choice of setting, however.

«So the last vacation I took before Covid was to Portugal,» Gardiner said. «And as I'm sure everyone is aware, in Covid you really remember that last vacation.»

Along with his visit to Portugal, Gardiner found inspiration for Wyrdsong in the country's past. «I started reading an alternative history book about the Templars, that postulates that they actually originated as part of the forming of