You guys—I cannot get over this whole interview because Josh Sawyer's career trajectory through Fallout history is genuinely fascinating and his unfiltered take on what FNV could have been is pure fire. For context: Sawyer started at Games Workshop in Australia before moving into game design and eventually landing at Bethesda, where he worked as a writer/designer on the Fallout Tactics project (2004) and later became creative director of FallOut Online — yes, that's real — which predated New Vegas by years. He was also on the original fallout team in the 90s before becoming lead designer of FNV, which launched in late 2010 with a cancelled edition pack and several delayed features the team desperately wanted to ship. This whole retrospective is worth it because Sawyer gets uncomfortably honest about where he'd go now if Bethesda let him rebuild Vegas as they want, and his vision for the Mojave is actually coherent enough to make you sad that the game didn't get its full build in 2010.
His central argument hits hard: Fallout games need meaningful factions because without them there's no point fighting anything, so destroying the NCR entirely would destroy the gameplay loop. He explains how Bethesda wouldn't let him do it at FO76 — which is currently in a new chapter with live events and multiplayer additions of its own — because they want one definitive faction to remain as the primary antagonist, even though he thinks that compromises player agency by removing real choice. Instead Sawyer wants both NCR and Legion to be playable through faction-based skill checks where every major decision escalates consequences differently for each side over time. He would've built a Caravan system tied directly into your reputation with different factions so merchants wouldn't just vanish, plus he'd added more meaningful faction escalation where the player actually changes who controls which Vegas landmark throughout their run — not just static tags at the end of a questline.
One detail that still bugs me: Sawyer openly admitted to doing what Bethesda told him at FO76 while refusing to compromise on FNV's core systems, and he credits that distinction for why New Vegas aged better than Fallout 4 in many ways despite being older. He would have added an escort/escort-combat system designed around the player's current reputation with each group, so a Courier allied with Caesar wouldn't get ambushed by NCR patrols — it would be a different ambush from Legion scouts instead. The game also would have featured more meaningful caravan points and better loot systems that didn't rely on generic chests but rather on location-specific merchant skills Sawyer honed at Obsidian. He's now back in the Bethesda fold as creative director, so whatever he builds next will carry these Fallout 76 lessons forward — which is terrifying AND exciting because we might actually get another open world with real factions one day. Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fallout/fallout-new-vegas-director-josh-sawyer-reveals-his-optimal-outcome-for-the-mojave-wasteland/
His central argument hits hard: Fallout games need meaningful factions because without them there's no point fighting anything, so destroying the NCR entirely would destroy the gameplay loop. He explains how Bethesda wouldn't let him do it at FO76 — which is currently in a new chapter with live events and multiplayer additions of its own — because they want one definitive faction to remain as the primary antagonist, even though he thinks that compromises player agency by removing real choice. Instead Sawyer wants both NCR and Legion to be playable through faction-based skill checks where every major decision escalates consequences differently for each side over time. He would've built a Caravan system tied directly into your reputation with different factions so merchants wouldn't just vanish, plus he'd added more meaningful faction escalation where the player actually changes who controls which Vegas landmark throughout their run — not just static tags at the end of a questline.
One detail that still bugs me: Sawyer openly admitted to doing what Bethesda told him at FO76 while refusing to compromise on FNV's core systems, and he credits that distinction for why New Vegas aged better than Fallout 4 in many ways despite being older. He would have added an escort/escort-combat system designed around the player's current reputation with each group, so a Courier allied with Caesar wouldn't get ambushed by NCR patrols — it would be a different ambush from Legion scouts instead. The game also would have featured more meaningful caravan points and better loot systems that didn't rely on generic chests but rather on location-specific merchant skills Sawyer honed at Obsidian. He's now back in the Bethesda fold as creative director, so whatever he builds next will carry these Fallout 76 lessons forward — which is terrifying AND exciting because we might actually get another open world with real factions one day. Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fallout/fallout-new-vegas-director-josh-sawyer-reveals-his-optimal-outcome-for-the-mojave-wasteland/