Fallout: New Vegas director on the ‘blessing’ of working on an RPG: ‘I never thought I’d get the chance to work on Fallout (again)’

After the cancellation of the first Fallout game he worked on, Josh Sawyer was determined to seize a second chance to work on the series when the opportunity to direct Fallout: New Vegas arose.

Over the past decade, Josh Sawyer has effectively established himself as a household name in the gaming industry, helming both the Pillars of Eternity games and, most recently, the 2022 medieval fiction RPG Pentiment. But for many, his crowning achievement will likely always be 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas, a game that Sawyer himself considers a blessing.

While at Black Isle Studios, Sawyer served as lead systems designer on the later canceled Fallout 3 project, codenamed Van Buren. About five years later, Sawyer was working at Obsidian Entertainment, and after the release of Fallout 3, which we all know and (mostly) love, Sawyer had the opportunity to work on the franchise again when Bethesda signed the studio to develop New Vegas – Sawyer alone. wasn’t going to give up. “It’s a blessing.” he said of the opportunity in issue 404 of Edge: “I never thought I’d get the chance to work on Fallout (again).”

At the time, Obsidian had just completed work on the canceled RPG Aliens, which Sawyer was named director towards the end of, and with only 18 months to develop New Vegas, he credited Bethesda’s technology with helping solve many of the studio’s problems. previous problems.

“We spent a lot of time and effort on the (Aliens) technology, but the areas took forever to create and we essentially didn’t have a game.” he began. “Then we got Bethesda technology (which) is extremely powerful for quickly creating content, more than any engine and toolset I’ve ever used. With their tools, you can create content so quickly. So I said, “Hey everyone, we don’t want to disrupt our pipelines at all.” “Essentially, we want to take what’s there—add to it, don’t change it, just add to it—and create great content.”

As the process has become more streamlined, Sawyer has more time to focus on overseeing the design team, but he insists that the designers themselves deserve most of the credit. “They are responsible for its development and implementation. The only (worldbuilding) I was really responsible for was the concept and visualization of Caesar’s Legion and the NCR military with Brian Menze.”

When asked if his previous Fallout experience influenced his time in New Vegas, Sawyer confirms that they “did take some things” from Van Buren, such as “The Burnt Man”, but it wasn’t wholesale. “It was more like an aesthetic or an interesting background,” he added. “Then there were other things, like Arcade (Gannon) and Jean-Baptiste Cutting, who was part of the Van Graff family, were two of my tabletop characters.” us that Sawyer got a second chance.

In our list of games you will find a couple of games by Josh Sawyer. best role playing games.

Fallout: New Vegas director on the ‘blessing’ of working on an RPG: ‘I never thought I’d get the chance to work on Fallout (again)’

Archives

Categories