Fallout: New Vegas Director Reveals Obsidian's Internal "Karma Police" Design Squad

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One of many things that makes Fallout: New Vegas a standout within the franchise is how well balanced its classes are. Any build you make is distinct and gratifying, an uncommon experience when it comes to RPGs of any type. Josh Sawyer, New Vegas' director, puts this down to a special squad within developer Obsidian who sense-check the player's options.

"We just wanted to set up the player to believe, however you built your character, it's not gonna be the same experience," he tells PCGamer about Fallout: New Vegas. "We're not gonna let you down. We're not gonna leave you out to dry and not give you something to be excited about."

Sawyer, who still serves as a game director at Obsidian, wants to make sure the RPG remains worthwhile and intriguing to players. So, "We have an informal job on the design team called 'Karma Police,'" he says. "At a few points during development, we'll ask a designer to go through all the scripts – usually in dialogue, but also everywhere in the game⁠ – and see 'How often is Guns being checked? How often is Charisma being checked? How often is Barter being checked?'"

There's essentially a spectrum for encounters where one skill is needed, or could be more useful than another, and Obsidian aims to be within a certain threshold on all fronts. "Let's say there's 40 [checks] in Medicine, and there's like, 28 in Science. Great! Get in the ballpark," Sawyer muses. "You don't want to go huge stretches of the game and be like, 'Man, I invested in this skill and it never comes up.'"

I would agree, and I'd go further to say, if you make these internal stats too arbitrary – make them all 35 or something – players would start noticing the patterns through comparison. A little bit of randomness is good to keep us on our toes, and perhaps more importantly, to encourage replays. And if ever there's an RPG that's good for replaying, it's Fallout: New Vegas.

Fallout designer Tim Cain "fumbled" through his career and "didn't think about a sequel" to the first apocalyptic RPG or Arcanum while making them.