{"id":1619248,"date":"2026-06-28T21:30:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T21:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xcmSHkBTEGrLJLeniEz9QL"},"modified":"2026-06-28T21:30:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T21:30:47","slug":"fallout-new-vegas-director-josh-sawyer-says-obsidian-has-karma-police-who-go-through-games-making-sure-every-skill-gets-enough-cool-stuff-to-do-were-not-gonna-leave-you-out-to-dry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fallout-new-vegas-director-josh-sawyer-says-obsidian-has-karma-police-who-go-through-games-making-sure-every-skill-gets-enough-cool-stuff-to-do-were-not-gonna-leave-you-out-to-dry\/","title":{"rendered":"Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer says Obsidian has &#8216;Karma Police&#8217; who go through games making sure every skill gets enough cool stuff to do: &#8216;We&#8217;re not gonna leave you out to dry&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<p>In a recent appearance on the <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/76V1O4FUb2k?si=wDc72qRToNMfplPf\" target=\"_blank\">Human Can Opener podcast<\/a>, Obsidian design director Josh Sawyer talked about how the studio approached balance in Fallout: New Vegas, particularly with skill checks in dialogue and making sure different character builds got unique, cool reactivity throughout the game.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-video\" data-nosnippet >\n<div class=\"video-aspect-box\"><iframe data-lazy-priority=\"high\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/76V1O4FUb2k\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&#8220;Some people think I&#8217;m preoccupied with balance,&#8221; said Sawyer. &#8220;I want people to build characters and have a good time with them. You have to think a little bit, but I don&#8217;t like it when players have a character concept that they build, and it&#8217;s like &#8216;Oh, you just built a fundamentally bad character.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>After Troika closed and before the likes of Owlcat, ZA\/UM, and Larian really took off, Obsidian was practically peerless when it came to this sort of design in RPGs. Much love to BioWare, but it would typically just rely on a persuasion skill to win conversations and avoid fights. <\/p>\n<p>Obsidian&#8217;s always been great at letting you deploy odd skills in dialogue and the world, like recruiting a new sheriff for Primm with Science, Barter, or Speech in New Vegas. This also extends to combat: Sawyer cited New Vegas&#8217; removal of the Big Guns skill and divvying the relevant weapons into Guns, Energy Weapons, and Explosives as an example of design supporting build diversity.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want people to have to invest in the skill, and then [we] try to support it throughout the game,&#8221; said Sawyer, referring to the steady flow of relevant big guns a separate Big Guns skill would have required. &#8220;Or worse, <em>not <\/em>support it throughout the game, which is kinda how Fallout 1 worked. If you tag Big Guns in Fallout 1, you&#8217;re not gonna see a big gun until The Hub\u2060\u2014good luck!&#8221;<\/p>\n<div style=\"min-height: 250px;\">\n<div class=\"kwizly-quiz kwizly-ORV41O\"><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p> <script src=\"https:\/\/kwizly.com\/embed\/ORV41O.js\" async><\/script><\/p>\n<p>As for skill checks, Sawyer said that he endeavors to make sure a given RPG&#8217;s skills are always &#8220;useful in a really meaningful and unique way.&#8221; He argued that designers have to build trust with players in this regard\u2014I flashed back to all the times I&#8217;ve sat before a character creation screen and wondered &#8220;Is this a game where persuasion matters at all? Will I be punished for wanting to be a sneaky rogue?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sawyer pointed to how former Obsidian designer Eric Fenstermaker, who built the starting town of Goodsprings, ensured New Vegas made a good first impression to build that trust. Sawyer didn&#8217;t cite specific examples, but I thought of how, in the quest Ghost Town Gunfight, a player&#8217;s Sneak, Explosives, Barter, Speech, and Medicine can all be used to influence how things play out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We just wanted to set up the player to believe, however you built your character, it&#8217;s not gonna be the same experience, but we&#8217;re not gonna let you down,&#8221; said Sawyer. &#8220;We&#8217;re not gonna leave you out to dry and not give you something to be excited about.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>The developer caveated that &#8220;it&#8217;s not about perfect balance,&#8221; and went on to describe one of the practical measures Obsidian takes to ensure each skill gets sufficient play throughout a game. &#8220;We have an informal job on the design team called &#8216;Karma Police,'&#8221; said Sawyer. &#8220;At a few points during development, we&#8217;ll ask a designer to go through all the scripts\u2060\u2014usually in dialogue, but also everywhere in the game\u2060\u2014and see &#8216;How often is Guns being checked? How often is Charisma being checked? How often is Barter being checked?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not about &#8216;perfect.&#8217; Let&#8217;s say there&#8217;s 40 [checks] in Medicine, and there&#8217;s like, 28 in Science. Great! Get in the ballpark. You don&#8217;t want to go huge stretches of the game and be like, &#8216;Man, I invested in this skill and it never comes up.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sawyer also touched on one of the great tensions in designing videogame RPGs versus tabletop ones: This sort of reactivity and accommodation is something a game master can do on the fly, rather than having to anticipate player needs years in advance. He recalled a college friend who &#8220;bent over backwards&#8221; to work with one of Sawyer&#8217;s RPG characters, an architecture specialist.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think that what good DMs and good game designers do is, in RPGs, they want you to feel like, &#8216;Yeah man, I did a Survival run and I got all these cool interactions,'&#8221; Sawyer concluded. &#8220;We just want players to have that experience.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"product\"><a data-dimension112=\"cc5fd9b1-edad-4304-9362-65e9c2c7ebfd\" data-action=\"Deal Block\" data-label=\"2026 games\" data-dimension48=\"2026 games\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><\/p>\n<figure class=\"van-image-figure \" >\n<div class='image-full-width-wrapper'>\n<div class='image-widthsetter' style=\"max-width:661px;\">\n<p class=\"vanilla-image-block\" style=\"padding-top:98.94%;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"6offQUY4CXebir2TC27dMd\" name=\"kingdom come 2 square\" caption=\"\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/fallout-new-vegas-director-josh-sawyer-says-obsidian-has-karma-police-who-go-through-games-making-sure-every-skill-gets-enough-cool-stuff-to-do-were-not-gonna-leave-you-out-to-dry.jpg\" mos=\"\" align=\"middle\" fullscreen=\"\" width=\"661\" height=\"654\" attribution=\"\" endorsement=\"\" credit=\"\" class=\"\"><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/games\/new-pc-games-2026\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-dimension112=\"cc5fd9b1-edad-4304-9362-65e9c2c7ebfd\" data-action=\"Deal Block\" data-label=\"2026 games\" data-dimension48=\"2026 games\" data-dimension25=\"\"><strong>2026 games<\/strong><\/a>: All the upcoming games<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/the-best-pc-games\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Best PC games<\/strong><\/a>: Our all-time favorites<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/the-50-best-free-pc-games\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Free PC games<\/strong><\/a>: Freebie fest<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/best-fps-games\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Best FPS games<\/strong><\/a>: Finest gunplay<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/best-rpgs-of-all-time\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Best RPGs<\/strong><\/a>: Grand adventures<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/the-best-co-op-games\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Best co-op games<\/strong><\/a>: Better together<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/games\/fallout\/fallout-new-vegas-director-josh-sawyer-says-obsidian-has-karma-police-who-go-through-the-game-making-sure-every-skill-gets-enough-cool-stuff-to-do-were-not-gonna-leave-you-out-to-dry\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent appearance on the Human Can Opener podcast, Obsidian design director Josh Sawyer talked about how the studio approached balance in Fallout: New Vegas, particularly with skill checks in dialogue and making sure different character builds got unique, cool reactivity throughout the game. &#8220;Some people think I&#8217;m preoccupied with balance,&#8221; said Sawyer. &#8220;I want people to build characters and have a good time with them. You have to think a little bit, but I don&#8217;t like it when players have a character concept that they build, and it&#8217;s like &#8216;Oh, you just built a fundamentally bad character.&#8217;&#8221; After Troika closed and before the likes of Owlcat, ZA\/UM, and Larian really took off, Obsidian was practically peerless when it came to this sort of&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerpt-more\"><a class=\"blog-excerpt button\" href=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fallout-new-vegas-director-josh-sawyer-says-obsidian-has-karma-police-who-go-through-games-making-sure-every-skill-gets-enough-cool-stuff-to-do-were-not-gonna-leave-you-out-to-dry\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1619249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[336],"tags":[1667,748,34],"class_list":["post-1619248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pc-gamer","tag-fallout","tag-games","tag-rpg"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer says Obsidian has &#039;Karma Police&#039; who go through games making sure every skill gets enough cool stuff to do: &#039;We&#039;re not gonna leave you out to dry&#039; | Arcader News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In a recent appearance on the Human Can Opener podcast, Obsidian design director Josh Sawyer talked about how the studio approached balance in Fallout:\" \/>\n<meta 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