With the Fallout TV show out and getting critical acclaim, it’s no surprise that it’s getting its own detractors. But it’s not directed so much at the showrunners but rather its producer Todd Howard and by extension his company Bethesda.

See, many people online are bugging Todd Howard about Fallout: New Vegas, the 2010 Fallout game set in a wasteland Nevada with its own dirty version of Las Vegas. The location did make an appearance in the Fallout TV show (alongside the New California Republic faction) , though its portrayal made fans accuse Todd Howard and co. of erasing New Vegas’ storyline from the Fallout canon.

That isn’t the case, at least according to an excerpt from a recent Kinda Funny Games interview with the Bethesda game director/executive producer. When asked if there will be a collaboration between Bethesda and Obsidian regarding a new Fallout game, Todd Howard can’t say much.

“I can’t speak to things that we’re doing with the franchise in the future, obviously.”

He also clarified that he has never been an Obsidian hater, given the aforementioned rumours.

“First I’ll say, [Obsidian] did an amazing job with New Vegas. And I’ll say to everybody, that’s a game that we published … and I would say Feargus [Urquhart], who runs Obsidian, is absolutely one of my favorite people in the videogame industry … New Vegas is a very, very important game to us, and our fans, we think they did an incredible job. If anything, the show is leaning into the events [of New Vegas].

[I]t is obviously difficult to deal with when you’re going back to an area where a game had multiple endings. We have some answers there, but it’s hard. I’ll just admit—everybody realize, it’s hard to canonize, or say, ‘This is exactly how that game ended.’ And so, whenever we can, I like to avoid it: Don’t refute anything that happened, be careful when you’re specific about what happened. We want that game and what the players did to be their reality and truth.

Like, where do you draw the line between what’s true and what’s not true? What we tend to do is, the most truthful thing is what people saw on the screen, right? That’s the most truth. And then things that are written officially along with the games are kinda second truth. And then, other things that are written or done outside of that—spin-off things, or somebody answering on the internet—those things are kinda third place.

And when you go do something new, you kind of look back over that and go, ‘OK, how much do I want to lean in on this truth down here, versus this other one?’ Or if you have a really really good idea, or you want to move things forward in some way, how do you acknowledge that [history] while still moving things forward? And obviously it can be tricky when some of those things refute [each other].”

Fallout is available to watch right now on Amazon Prime Video. For more on the show, check out our review and our easter egg guide.