{"id":774888,"date":"2026-07-21T00:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T00:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/774888\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T00:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T00:48:09","slug":"fallout-new-vegas-director-rpgs-cant-let-players-control-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/774888\/","title":{"rendered":"Fallout New Vegas Director: RPGs Can’t Let Players Control Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

Josh Sawyer is reportedly directing<\/a> the already announced Fallout game from Obsidian<\/a>. And while we don\u2019t know much about what the New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity director is going to do with the upcoming Obsidian-created Fallout game, it\u2019s very likely that you\u2019re going to have to make some hard choices and you won\u2019t be able to solve every problem with a punch or a lie.<\/p>\n

In a new interview with The Examined Game,<\/a> Sawyer talked about how role-playing games are \u201cat their best\u201d and players feel \u201cat the center\u201d of all their decisions when they \u201ccan control a lot,\u201d but importantly, \u201ccan\u2019t control everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019ve done this in a lot of the games I\u2019ve worked on to different levels of success or favorable or unfavorable reception by the audience,\u201d admitted Sawyer in the interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire<\/a>, notably you can\u2019t stop Eothas,\u201d he said. \u201cLike he\u2019s just going to do what he\u2019s going to do. And you\u2019re kind of told that point blank, and we also try to telegraph that he\u2019s way beyond the ability to physically do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, that didn\u2019t stop some players from thinking they could still stop and defeat the powerful god-like being. Sawyer says many RPGs have \u201cconditioned\u201d players to assume they can take out any big bad guy or solve every problem. So when players realize they can\u2019t do that in Deadfire and can only help make the damage caused by Eothas less severe, some appreciated the limits on their ability to impact the situation, while others likely found it strange that simply defeating this enemy was beyond them.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of that idea was again going against this idea of \u2018I\u2019m the protagonist, I can literally do anything,\u201d said Sawyer. \u201cAnd I was like, well, with a role-playing game, so much of what we excel at is making the player sort of sit and deal with their choices, which often feel very imperfect. That sense of agony where you\u2019re like, I have two things to do that are good and bad, and I\u2019ve got to decide which is most important.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many problems are just human problems. They\u2019re part of the reality of life and being a human being and living on this planet with other people right now. And even in a fantastic world, there are still going to be powers that are beyond you. There are things that you can\u2019t overwhelm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sawyer pointed to a moment in Obsidian\u2019s Pentiment and how players have to accuse someone of murder. But the player can never really, truly figure out who committed the crime.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you understand that this person is going to die and you have to pick someone,\u201d explained Sawyer. \u201cAnd so you kind of have to do your best. And again, it requires the player to interrogate their own values and say, like, is it most important to me that I condemn the person I think did it? Is it most important to me that I condemn the person that I dislike? Is it most important to me that I condemn the person that I think the town will miss the least, or like, and it\u2019s not easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once players have made that tough choice, one which involved forces outside of their control, Pentiment forces you to watch the execution, which can often be messy and horrible.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so a lot of players are just like\u2026\u2019I wish I hadn\u2019t done this.\u2019 And they\u2019re just like, \u2018I don\u2019t know if there was a better decision to make here but, like, I didn\u2019t think it was going to happen like this.\u2019 And it\u2019s like, well, this is how it happened,\u201d said Sawyer with a smile.<\/p>\n

Again, we have no idea what Sawyer\u2019s reported Fallout game will look like, when it will arrive, or what it will be about.<\/a> Still, I think his thoughts here about RPGs and the choices within them are great.<\/p>\n

So many RPGs, Bethesda\u2019s included, let you unlock everything, complete every mission, and solve every problem or stop every bad guy. It can be fun, sure, but it also robs these RPGs of tension, and it often leads to games that feel devoid of memorable or meaningful moments. That\u2019s not the case in games like Pillars of Eternity or New Vegas or other Obsidian games. In these RPGs, choices can often linger with players for years and years, spawning online debate over which choice was right and which was wrong. And if Obsidian\u2019s Fallout game has a lot of these kinds of moments in it, I\u2019ll be there day one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Sawyer is reportedly directing the already announced Fallout game from Obsidian. And while we don\u2019t know much…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[12681,180458,330555,74,1298],"class_list":["post-774888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-fallout-5","tag-fallout-new-vegas","tag-josh-sawyer","tag-technology","tag-xbox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}