It’s been 16 years since Obsidian Entertainment’s release and although it was often criticized for its major technical problems, it eventually became arguably the most popular and well-known RPG worldwide. series, many consider it the best game in the franchise. We asked our readers a question in the surveyand 50% agreed with this opinion.
What was achieved with New Vegas would be impressive if the game had one normal development cycle, but what makes it a particularly remarkable achievement is that Obsidian only had 18 months to put it together. The studio agreed to a year and a half to make the RPG it gave because the latter wanted a new 2010 game to fill the gap between 2008. The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim.
In New Vegas director and lead designer Josh Sawyer reflected on the title’s extremely tight development timeline, explaining that since Obsidian built the game around a time crunch, it adapted Fallout 3’s engine technology and assets as much as possible to focus on narrative, quest design, and open-world reactivity.
“For Fallout: New Vegas … my goal was — well, we were limited to 18 months from the beginning,” Sawyer said. “So I said, ‘Let’s modestly rebuild some of the systemic work that Bethesda has done. Let’s do our best to emulate their open-world exploration style and tell the best stories we can with the best quest reactivity we know how to do.” Because there was very little else we could do in that time window.”
Indeed, Obsidian drew so much from Fallout 3 that some of its developers “felt a little sensitive at first” about the recent success of New Vegasbut it paid off in the end. New Vegas became a hit and masterpiece in the eyes of many, with most citing its rich and nuanced writing as its best quality – but even before that, Sawyer was convinced that the developers made the right call, even if it meant curbing the RPG’s scope.
“I believed in this team. We had fantastic designers and writers, and I believed they could create really great searches and content.” “So I just said, ‘Look, we can’t focus on anything crazier than this. So let’s create the best search content and story content we can.”
“That was the goal. And to do it in 18 months, it meant that a lot of other ideas about what we could do just had to fall by the wayside,” Sawyer said. “So 18 months wasn’t the goal, it was a constraint, but we had to work within it and that’s why it was so focused and I think the team did a fantastic job.”
I’d love to see what New Vegas would look like if Obsidian had more time to flesh out all of their ideas. However, it’s still a great game and I believe the studio tried to make it in the smartest way they could given the tight development time.
Is Fallout: New Vegas your favorite Fallout game? If not, which one? Are you excited for Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters? Vote in our poll and share your thoughts in the comments.
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