Josh Sawyer wasn't directors for those at least. He's likely the one that would be in charge of a new fallout game, and I can hope that he still has it.

Pentiment was a very creative work, so he's clearly still got some artistic vision.

Gonzalez and Tim Cain coming back, plus Joshua Sawyer leading the project, is at least a good combo. Probably won't be lightning in a bottle again, but will be better than, say, Fallout 4, which is enough for me!

I played both 1 and 2 and some of Avowed and I don't want to be overly critical but... how average they are is kind of insulting. I don't think they revolutionized anything or improved upon anything substantially between any of those games. There were 0 risks taken, they felt very safe and by the books, meaning that nothing especially interesting was attempted either. The best I can really say is that they run well, which I can't say for the older Fallout games at this point.

Maybe whatever they put out will be better than something from Bethesda, who also seem incapable of moving away from their decades old outdated designs, as evidence by Starfield. But people have been saying "let Obsidian do it" since all the people who worked on their best games were there. Most of them aren't anymore and the company hasn't put out anything I would consider as culturally iconic or deserving of praise as their earliest titles.

I would even say Alpha Protocol, as broken as it was, was a better game than anything they've done recently. It was at least unique. Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity 2 are also good CRPGs, but I doubt their plan is to create a new Fallout game in that style. That probably has the best chances of being close to anything old Obsidian produced. They could win people's hearts back if they essentially made Van Buren and got the Owlcat & Baldur's Gate 3 crowd.