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It's been 16 years since Obsidian Entertainment released Fallout: New Vegas, and while it was often criticized at launch for its major technical issues, it eventually grew to become what is arguably the most popular and famous RPG in the entire Fallout series, with many regarding it as the best game in the franchise. We asked our readers in a poll, and 50% of you agreed with that sentiment.
What was accomplished with New Vegas would be impressive if the game had a normal development cycle, but what makes it a particularly remarkable achievement is the fact that Obsidian had just 18 months to pull it together. The studio agreed to a year-and-a-half period to make the RPG given by Bethesda, as the latter wanted a new 2010 game to fill the gap between 2008's Fallout 3 and 2011's The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim.
In a new YouTube video, New Vegas' director and lead designer Josh Sawyer has reflected on the title's extremely tight development timeframe, explaining that since Obsidian was building the game on a time crunch, it adapted as much of Fallout 3's engine tech and assets as possible so it could focus on narrative, quest design, and open-world reactivity.
"For Fallout: New Vegas ... my goal was — well, we were constrained by the 18 months from the beginning," Sawyer began. "So, I said, 'let's modestly restructure some of the systemic things that Bethesda did. Try to do as much as we can to emulate their style of open world exploration, and let's try to just tell the best stories we can with the best quest reactivity that we know how to do.' Because there was very little else that we could do in that window of time."
Indeed, Obsidian ended up drawing on so much of Fallout 3 that some of its devs "initially felt a little touchy" about the eventual success of New Vegas, but in the end, it paid off. New Vegas went on to become a hit and a masterpiece in the eyes of many, with most citing its rich and nuanced writing as its best quality — but even before then, Sawyer was confident that the developers made the right call, even though it meant reining in the scope of the RPG.
"I believed in that team. We had fantastic designers and writers, and I believed that they could make really great quests and content," he explained. "So, I just said, 'Look, we can't set our sights on anything crazier than this. So, let's just make the best quest content and story content that we can.'"
"And that was the goal. And get it done within 18 months, which meant that a lot of other ideas about things that we could do had to just fall by the wayside," Sawyer continued. "So the 18 months wasn't a goal, it was a constraint, but we had to work within it and so that's why it became so focused and I think the team did a fantastic job."
I'd have loved to see what New Vegas would have looked like if Obsidian had more time to execute on all the ideas it had. With that said, it's still a terrific game, and I believe the studio went about making it the smartest way it could have given the narrow development timeframe.
Is Fallout: New Vegas your favorite Fallout game? If it's not, which one is? Are you excited for the Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters? Vote in our poll and share your thoughts in the comments.
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