Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer has a long history with the post-apocalyptic RPG series going back to his time at Black Isle Studios, the development house that originally created the franchise. There, he worked on the original Fallout 3 – codenamed Van Buren – before financial troubles killed the project and the company. According to Sawyer, Fallout was a dream project, and he figured he'd never get another chance at the series. That is, until New Vegas came along. After the release of Fallout 3, Bethesda wanted to return to The Elder Scrolls to create what would eventually become Skyrim. But the company still wanted to keep Fallout's successful revival going, which is why it wanted to offer a spin-off project to another studio. Obsidian, which was founded by a number of ex-Black Isle employees, seemed like a perfect fit. "I was stunned, honestly," Sawyer tells Game Informer. "When I first came to Black Isle in 1999, it was my dream to work on a Fallout game. The studio got that chance in early 2003, when we were working on our version of Fallout 3. Around late 2003, Interplay started having serious financial troubles. I left Black Isle to go to Midway San Diego and later to Obsidian. When Bethesda bought the Fallout license a few years later, I figured I would never have a chance to work on the series again." Todd Howard says Obsidian was "the only choice" for Fallout: New Vegas Explore the history of the Fallout games with some of the devs who helped bring the iconic RPG franchise to life “We started with the solid foundation that we inherited from Fallout 3”: How Fallout: New Vegas delivered a bigger, better post-apocalypse by sticking to the script – mostly Many of the scrapped ideas for Van Buren were eventually reintegrated into New Vegas, and Sawyer figures that Obsidian's continuity with Black Isle helped keep the spirit of the original games alive. "This is maybe an overly simplistic view," he explains, "but in a lot of ways, I feel like the tenets of the franchise were already closely aligned with Obsidian’s. Black Isle’s DNA heavily influenced Obsidian, even with a new generation of developers." Bethesda's Fallout 3 offered plenty of freedom to explore, but its quests weren't as open-ended and reactive as those in the original Black Isle games. "In my mind, I went back to what I loved about the first Fallout: being able to go anywhere, to skip sections of the critical path, to kill anyone (or no one) and still complete the main quest," Sawyer says. "These aren’t elements in all Obsidian games (or Black Isle games) but they felt important for New Vegas. I also think it was important for us to hit a good balance of serious themes with goofball humor. Fallout has always dealt with important topics in a heartfelt way but can also be stupidly hilarious." These days, New Vegas is usually ranked as the best Fallout game, thanks to its ability to blend the deep role-playing options of the older games with the more streamlined, immersive gameplay of the Bethesda era. But "it took about 5 years" for New Vegas to win over fans, according to Sawyer, since it launched in a very buggy state and looked a whole lot like Fallout 3. I guess genius really is never respected in its own time. Fallout devs wanted uber-violent deaths to feel "like an R-rated version of Warner Bros cartoons" back in the '90s: "It was supposed to be funny."