Fallout: New Vegas director on the “blessing” of working on the 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 not to waste 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, directing both the Pillars of Eternity games and, more recently, the 2022 medieval art 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 worked as lead systems designer on a later canceled Fallout 3 project code name Van Buren. About five years later, Sawyer worked for Obsidian entertainmentand after the release of the Fallout 3 we all know and (mostly) love, Sawyer got the chance to work on the franchise again when Bethesda signed the studio to develop New Vegas – a Sawyer wasn’t going to pass him up. “This is a blessing.” he said of the opportunity in Edge issue 404, “I never thought I’d get the chance to work on Fallout (again).

At the time, Obsidian was fresh off a canceled Aliens RPG, by the end of which Sawyer had been promoted to director, and with only 18 months to develop New Vegas, he credits Bethesda’s technology with solving many of the studio’s problems. previous problems.

“We had put a lot of time and effort into the (Aliens) technology, but it took forever to create areas and we basically had no game.” he started. “Then we got Bethesda’s technology, which is extremely powerful for creating content quickly, more so than any engine and toolset I’ve ever used. You can create content so quickly with their tools. So I said, ‘Hey everyone, we don’t want to disrupt our pipelines at all. We basically want to take what’s there – add to it, don’t change anything, just add to it – and create great content.”

With the process more streamlined, Sawyer had more time to focus on overseeing the design team, but he emphasizes that the designers themselves deserve most of the credit. “They are responsible for devising and implementing it. The only thing (world building) I was really responsible for was the concept and visualization, with Brian Menze, of Caesar’s Legion and the NCR Army.

As for whether his previous Fallout experience colored his time in New Vegas, Sawyer confirms that they “took certain things” from Van Buren, like the Burned Man, but they weren’t in a big way. “It seemed 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, two of my tabletop characters.” Ultimately, it feels like a blessing to all of us that Sawyer got his second chance.

You’ll find some of Josh Sawyer’s games in our list of games best RPG games.