Have people forgotten that Chris Avellone, the key writer responsible for the quality of New Vegas' (and the original Fallout games) story, left the company a good while ago?
Chris Avellone was responsible for a lot of the writing in Fallout 2 but had very little impact on the story and overall design of the first Fallout, which IMO is superior to the second one. Fallout can still be good, or even better, without him involved.
I'll agree that we'd probably see a lot of what made Fallout: New Vegas special disappear, and without the original Fallout's designers like Tim Cain there to pick up the slack it's going to be hard to replace it. I trust JE Sawyer though.