Josh Sawyer’s Fallout: New Vegas is widely regarded as one of the best games in the Fallout series as well as one of the best RPG games of all time. Developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Bethesda Softworks, Fallout: New Vegas was a spin-off of the main Fallout series but still shared some elements from the main series. It’s nearly impossible to tell how gamers would react to certain mechanics of a video game before its release, but Fallout: New Vegas‘ director Josh Sawyer explained that it is purely based on “vibes.”
Most games in the market right now go through various testing phases, but Sawyer explained that in terms of ability and weapon balance, he doesn’t focus much on player feedback as it simply “doesn’t really matter to him.” He admitted that conducting a simulation before the final release would be beneficial, but he wasn’t interested as playing the final version would be a more practical way to judge the game.
Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer doesn’t believe in testing some aspects of a video game before the final release
In a recent YouTube video, Josh Sawyer, the director of 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas, answered a question that he was asked on Tumblr regarding the abilities and weapon balance in his games. He was asked if he conducts some sort of simulation to test before players get their hands on the final product. Sawyer replied,
“It’s mostly vibes-based – I don’t really believe in spending a huge amount of time prior to people playing the game in sort of simulation land because it doesn’t really matter.”
Sawyer later explained that in the end, it’s about the practical effect of these elements in the game. All that is really needed is a framework, and most of the work should later be done in-game.
Josh Sawyer explained his approach for weapons in Fallout: New Vegas
In the video, Sawyer explained how he worked on weapons in his 2010 video game, Fallout: New Vegas. He revealed that he created a spreadsheet with all the values but as he worked on the game, he didn’t access it much as he believed that testing these elements in the final product is a better way to judge it. He said,
“For example, this is not abilities but it is weapons on Fallout: New Vegas, I made a spreadsheet – that listed out weapons by ammo type, I input ammo types with just a base damage value, and then I did some relative comparisons to damage threshold values. It was just a real basic sort of spreadsheet and I used it for maybe a couple of months as I sort of theorized about what I wanted to do. Then I stopped using it I looked at the SharePoint, which is our document repository for Fallout: New Vegas, and the last time I accessed that dock was March of 2010, so, I completely stopped using it.”
Fallout: New Vegas was a massive success and while this approach was indeed unique, it definitely had some consequences as many players came across various glitches and bugs in the game. Nonetheless, the game was praised for its writing, quests, and gameplay, becoming one of the best Fallout games in the series.
