You need to hear about this because Josh Sawyer's 'Karma Police' at Obsidian is one of the best examples I've seen of design intent shaping gameplay. Fallout New Vegas has skill interactions that Bethesda just couldn't match in Fallout 4, and it comes down to a literal team. The Karma Police were people who looked at every single skill — lockpicking, explosives, speech, all of them — and said 'this one needs more cool stuff.' His line was perfect: 'We're not gonna leave you out to dry,' which is basically the anti-Bethesda philosophy because Bethesda left several skills underpowered in Fallout 4 by design. New Vegas rewarded skill specialization with unique interactions instead of everyone ending up as a generalist, and that distinction changed the entire feel of the game for me.
The practical difference is huge when you play both. In Fallout 3 and 4, certain builds were just stronger than others because those skills had more content hooked into them. New Vegas gave every skill its own special thing — lockpickers get a dedicated minigame that feels like an event, explosive specialists find creative ways to demolish rooms, speech checks branch the dialogue tree instead of giving everyone the same answers. That's what makes it feel playable as a RPG rather than just another Fallout clone with different clothes at the end. I want Bethesda to hire him and let him build their next RPG because this is exactly the kind of design discipline that made New Vegas hold up better than Fallout 4 over time.
The contrast shows up most in multiplayer modes, which tells you everything about both teams' philosophies. The FallOut World online mode had a Skill Lock setting where your character was literally locked to one skill — lockpicker build or explosives builder and so on — because Bethesda designed for specialization. Then Fallout 4 launched with Nuka-Cola World and they REMOVED the Skill Lock Multiplayer, which basically means every player's gameplay experience became identical since everyone had all skills unlocked. That was the design team admitting their game didn't reward specificity enough to make it a viable multiplayer mode. New Vegas should have kept its skill system for multiplayer because that's what made it unique and Bethesda decided to flatten everything so more people could play without thinking too hard about builds, which is exactly why I prefer Obsidian's approach.
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fallout/fallout-new-vegas-director-josh-sawyer-says-obsidian-has-karma-police-who-go-through-the-game-making-sure-every-skill-gets-enough-cool-stuff-to-do-were-not-going-to-leave-you-out-to-dry/
The practical difference is huge when you play both. In Fallout 3 and 4, certain builds were just stronger than others because those skills had more content hooked into them. New Vegas gave every skill its own special thing — lockpickers get a dedicated minigame that feels like an event, explosive specialists find creative ways to demolish rooms, speech checks branch the dialogue tree instead of giving everyone the same answers. That's what makes it feel playable as a RPG rather than just another Fallout clone with different clothes at the end. I want Bethesda to hire him and let him build their next RPG because this is exactly the kind of design discipline that made New Vegas hold up better than Fallout 4 over time.
The contrast shows up most in multiplayer modes, which tells you everything about both teams' philosophies. The FallOut World online mode had a Skill Lock setting where your character was literally locked to one skill — lockpicker build or explosives builder and so on — because Bethesda designed for specialization. Then Fallout 4 launched with Nuka-Cola World and they REMOVED the Skill Lock Multiplayer, which basically means every player's gameplay experience became identical since everyone had all skills unlocked. That was the design team admitting their game didn't reward specificity enough to make it a viable multiplayer mode. New Vegas should have kept its skill system for multiplayer because that's what made it unique and Bethesda decided to flatten everything so more people could play without thinking too hard about builds, which is exactly why I prefer Obsidian's approach.
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fallout/fallout-new-vegas-director-josh-sawyer-says-obsidian-has-karma-police-who-go-through-the-game-making-sure-every-skill-gets-enough-cool-stuff-to-do-were-not-going-to-leave-you-out-to-dry/