It's intriguing; Obsidian is developing quite a reputation for finishing what other people started... KOTOR 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout Vegas, Something Else That Escapes Me Right Now; I think they're smart. These established franchises help keep the lights on, while the company also works on its own original IP (check out Scout's mention of Alpha Protocol here - https://tap-repeatedly.com/?p=1271)

Chris Avellone and Feargus Urquhart are game-developing geniuses. For my money they rank up there with Tim Cain, Ken Levine, Warren Spector, Fumito Ueda, and the rest of the pantheon.

I'm hoping to get Chris for a Celebrity Guest Editorial at some point. We'll have to see if he's interested!

To be precise, Bethesda's Fallout 3 engine is actually Emergent Technologies' GameBryo engine, a licensed 3rd party platform so versatile it's been used to create everything from tower defense games to MMOs. Bethesda has used Emergent's engines since before they were called Emergent (Morrowind was coded on the NetImmerse platform, the pre-GameBryo iteration). A good deal of under the hood modding was done for Oblivion and Fallout 3, but the heart of the tech remains the same. I only wish more developers would look to it rather than endlessly hopping on the Unreal bandwagon, especially considering that Unreal technology is nowhere near as versatile.