Josh Sawyer: Directing Fallout: New Vegas Was "Pure Luck"

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Josh Sawyer isn't taking any credit for Fallout: New Vegas's conception, despite the fact that he directed the beloved RPG at Obsidian.

Like most games, Fallout: New Vegas was a collaborative effort with various leads at Obsidian spearheading different elements of the world and story, but in terms of the initial concept, it's fairly established history that studio co-founder Chris Avellone came up with the idea for the starting incident, which is the courier getting shot in the head and being buried in a shallow grave. Sawyer, as director, set the overall vision of the project, but he makes clear in an interview with The Examined Game that he wasn't involved in the initial discussions at all.

"I wasn't part of any of those early conversations," he says. "When I was at Obsidian around 2009, I had been a lead designer on an Aliens project that went very badly," he adds, referring to the canceled horror RPG Aliens: Crucible, "and it was the owners who had been talking to Bethesda. I had no idea that any of this stuff was going on.

"But then Feargus Urquhart, who's the studio head of Obsidian, he came to me and he said 'hey, we're talking to Bethesda about making a Fallout game – I think it was called Fallout 3: New Vegas or Fallout 3: Sin City – but it was a proposal that I believe [Obsidian co-founder] Chris Avellone had written, and I was completely unaware that they were doing this really, but basically he said, 'would you be willing to direct it?', and I was like, 'yeah, what? Of course.'"

Hearing this, I can't help but be reminded of a recent video from Sawyer's old Obsidian co-worker and fellow Fallout royalty Tim Cain, in which Cain explains how he "fumbled" his way through his early career , including his time at Interplay in which he created the Fallout series. According to these two generational RPG developers, the trick to success in this industry is just to really make sure you're in the right place at the right time.

"I didn't pitch New Vegas. New Vegas almost literally fell in my lap, because Feargus just sort of said, 'here you go', and yeah, it was just luck. It was just pure luck, like most things in my career," Sawyer adds.

There's a good reason Fallout: New Vegas remains on our list of the best RPGs to play in 2026.