Today on The Examined Game I am talking with Josh Sawyer, Studio Design Director at Obsidian. Josh is an industry veteran who can lay his name to the likes of Icewind Dale, Fallout: New Vegas, Pentiment, The Outer Worlds, Pillars of Eternity II: Dead Fire and many more titles. so what do you talk about with someone who has so many incredible games under their belt? we dig into how to convey grief in a game, the beauty and frustration of not letting players kill God in an RPG, his beginnings as a Web Designer in the industry, how the Fallout New Vegas team made up for the shortfall in time and budget with exemplary content and world building and the risk he took in bringing Pentiment to life.
this is part one of a two part interview. The first covering everything upto and including Fallout New Vegas. Part two is dedicated almost exclusively to Pentiment. One of my favorite games of the last few years.
00:00 How Fallout: New Vegas Was Made in 18 Months
00:30 Introduction
01:16 What Josh Sawyer Is Playing Right Now
02:50 From Pong to Bard's Tale
05:30 Discovering D&D and RPGs
06:43 Wanting to Be an Illustrator
08:01 Music, History, and Finding a Direction
08:46 Designing Tabletop RPGs as a Teenager
09:56 Becoming a Web Designer at Black Isle Studios
10:36 From Website Designer to Game Designer
11:19 Finding His Path in the Games Industry
15:38 Designing His First Dungeon in Icewind Dale
16:59 Learning the Importance of Pacing
19:57 Why RPG Dungeons Used to Be So Massive
23:06 Becoming Lead Designer at 24
24:29 The Black Hound: The RPG That Never Released
26:13 Making Icewind Dale II in Just 10 Months
28:23 Fallout: Van Buren and Watching Black Isle Collapse
31:36 Getting the Chance to Make Fallout: New Vegas
34:17 The Core Design Goals of New Vegas
35:10 Why New Vegas Focused on Content Over Technology
36:04 Building Meaningful Choices and Factions
41:46 Josh Sawyer's Favourite New Vegas Ending
44:32 Why Great Writing Beats More Features
46:06 Why Fallout: New Vegas Wasn't Universally Loved at Launch
#falloutnewvegas #obsidian #icewinddale #pentiment #gaming #gamingpodcast