Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer knew the Fallout 3 comparisons were coming, but also knew that what made his RPG special were the things that you couldn’t find in one playthrough

Nov. 10, 2024

“You always have to prioritise things.”

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WhileFallout: New Vegasdirector Josh Sawyer was correct that players would compare the game toFallout 3and complain about its bugs, as it turns out, he was also right about what made New Vegas the iconic RPG it is today.

But while the complaints were sure to roll in, Sawyer was confident that the work theObsidian Entertainmentteam had put in regarding the game’s freedom of choice would pay dividends, especially on repeat playthroughs.

“All of our work had gone into the intricate and the freedom of the quests and the critical path, and the faction alliances.” Sawyer begins. “Those are things that, if you just do one playthrough, you are going to be like ‘yeah, whatever, who cares?’ So it did take time for people go ‘oh, wow, actually you can beeline straight to the strip.”

For Sawyer, ensuring that players had the freedom to play the game however they wanted was to be key to New Vegas’ success, and something that would only become apparent in the long run as players played through the game multiple times. “You don’t even have to do the critical path. You can kill anybody in the game and the game accounts for it. We really heavily focused on freedom to play the game the way you wanted, and I think that’s what stood out over time."

Check out Fallout: New Vegas among others on our list of thebest RPG games.

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Alex has written all sorts of things for websites including VideoGamer, PCGamer, PCGamesN and more. He’ll play anything from Tekken to Team Fortress 2, but you’ll typically find him failing to churn through his backlog because he’s too busy playing whatever weird and wonderful indie games have just come out.

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