Fallout co-creator Tim Cain is out of ‘semi-retirement’ and back at Obsidian

If you’ve got good taste (read: the exact same taste as me), Tim Cain bears a lot of responsibility for some of your favourite games ever. His name is on the original Fallouts, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, and plenty else besides.

Alas, he’s been in a state of kind-of-retirement in recent years, doing bits and pieces of contract work for Obsidian, his former employer, and others, but generally contenting himself with his YouTube channel, where he chats about game design, career anecdotes, and how he’s in “semi-retirement” now.

Well, no longer. In his most recent video, Cain announced that he’s moved back to California, gone back to full-time work at Obsidian (as an in-office, not remote, worker), gained several new t-shirts and a Moon Man tattoo, and befriended a squirrel in the time since he last updated us on his job situation. Which is quite a lot. I get tired if I have to go to the post office and go to work on the same day.

“I’m back at Obsidian,” an energetic Cain told viewers. “I’m their full-time employee, and in-person, not remote. So I’m not a contractor anymore.” What’s he working on? Well, wouldn’t you like to know? Cain’s not telling, but I confess I am very eager to find out what has the co-creator of Fallout ready to go fully John Wick and pick up his old trade once again.

He does say “Don’t bother guessing. You’re not going to guess” what it is. So I think that’s any game with Fallout in its title out the window.

Regardless, Cain’s been back at his desk for, uh, about a week now, he says, which suggests to my enormous, prodigious brain that we’re probably gonna have to wait a while before we learn what he’s working on. In the meantime, he says that at least one game—and perhaps more—that he did contract work on will release soonish, so if you’re desperate to play something with Tim Cain’s name in the credits, you’ve got that to look forward to.

As for his YouTube channel? That’s continuing. In fact, Cain says his colleagues at Obsidian are quite the fans of his YT side-hustle. That sound you hear is videogame newswriters worldwide heaving a heavy sigh of relief.

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