Joshua Sawyer

Joshua Eric "Josh" Sawyer is a developer who served as the project director and lead designer of Fallout: New Vegas. A design director at Obsidian Entertainment, Sawyer previously worked at Black Isle Studios as a designer on the canceled Van Buren project.
==Career==
===Work on the Fallout series===
====Van Buren (2003)====
Sawyer first worked on the Fallout series as an employee at Black Isle Studios in the early 2000s. He was the lead technical designer on its canceled Fallout 3 project, codenamed Van Buren. After Chris Avellone left Interplay Entertainment, Sawyer became the lead designer of Van Buren. He contributed to the design documents for New Canaan and Burham Springs.New Canaan design documentBurham Springs design document Many of the concepts and characters he developed for Van Buren, including Joshua Graham, Arcade Gannon and the Van Graffs, were later used in Fallout: New Vegas. In November 2003, he left Black Isle and thus his role as lead designer of Van Buren to pursue other projects.
====Interim====
Before arriving at Obsidian Entertainment, Sawyer developed an unofficial Fallout role-playing game in 2004. Some ideas from this RPG were also implemented in Fallout: New Vegas, such as concepts relating to the commonwealth system and the 80s raider tribe. Sawyer began working at Obsidian Entertainment in 2005.
====Fallout: New Vegas (2010)====
Sawyer was the project director and lead designer of Fallout: New Vegas, developed by Obsidian and published by Bethesda Softworks. Sawyer was responsible for some of the high-level writing and concepts for the game, alongside lead creative designer John Gonzalez and senior designer Chris Avellone.Joshua Sawyer on Twitter: "John Gonzalez was the lead creative designer (effectively "writing lead") on Fallout: New Vegas. He wrote the main plot from Chris Avellone's starting incident (shot in the head, dropped in a grave in the desert) and my end point (2nd Battle of Hoover Dam). 2/8" More specifically, Sawyer wrote many region design constraint documents, outlining several basic story and location concepts, as well as the conflicts within.Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011:Question: "I know that you wrote a couple of the quests, including Return To Sender, but did you help write any parts of the main storyline of New Vegas? If so, what parts?"Joshua Sawyer: "For the most part, I only wrote high-level documents. I didn't write any of the plot-critical characters and I didn't do detailed area development or implementation. I wrote our RDC (Region Design Constraints) documents, which had a basic overview of the concepts/conflicts for all of the primary locations (e.g. Goodsprings, Mojave Outpost, the vaults, The Strip, Nellis AFB, etc.) and I did the initial write-ups for the companions (just a page each covering their basic concept, background, personality, voice, and intended plot arc). Let me just do a mini-writing credits dump to answer a lot of common questions here. Most of the major plot characters (Benny, Victor, Caesar, Mr. House) and the main story itself were written by the game's creative lead, John Gonzalez. Eric Fenstermaker wrote Veronica and Boone. Chris Avellone wrote Cass, Lanius, and Oliver. Travis Stout wrote Lily and Raul. Most of the other characters, major and minor, were split between the writers above and other area designers. Of course the actual full design treatments, quests, and implementation of areas were done by the area designers. The only "big" characters I wrote were Chief Hanlon, Arcade Gannon, and President Kimball's speech. Also I just wrote/structured the dialogue in GECK. The design, implementation, and scripting for the associated quests of those dialogues (Return to Sender, For Auld Lang Syne, You'll Know It When You See It/Arizona Killer) were handled by Matt McLean, Travis Stout, Jeff Husges, and Charlie "Master of Hoover" Staples. Most of the content design and generation I did was for game systems (SPECIAL + gambling/Caravan + equipment)." In addition to his role as director, overseeing the game's development, he also worked on all of the systems design,Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011:Question: "I know you were the project director of F:NV, but what contributions did you make?"Joshua Sawyer: "For F:NV, I designed (but did not write the dialogue for) all of the companions and companion arcs. I did all of the system design and balancing. I wrote all of the high level RDCs (Region Design Constraints) that area designers used to write their ADDs (Area Design Docs). I wrote the dialogues for Arcade Gannon, Chief Hanlon, and President Kimball. For Honest Hearts, I was also the project director. I wrote the story, designed and tuned most of the gear, designed all of the main characters (the Happy Trails caravan, Ricky, Joshua Graham, Daniel, Follows-Chalk, Waking Cloud, and the Survivalist) and wrote Joshua Graham and Daniel (Ricky, Stella, and the Survivalist were written by John Gonzalez; Jed Masterson, Follows-Chalk, and Waking Cloud were written by Travis Stout). For Gun Runners' Arsenal, I did all of the design except for scripting, which was done by Jorge Salgado and Jeff Husges. On the other DLCs, all I did was weapon tuning." including weapon implementation, item tuning, perk design and combat changes.Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2010:Question: "What kind of work did you do in New Vegas? Specific things like any important locations or characters?"Joshua Sawyer: "I implemented and tuned all of the weapons, designed the perks, all of the system and combat design modifications, and wrote Chief Hanlon and Arcade Gannon. I also did the high-level concept design for all of the areas, but didn't do any core area design or implementation myself."
=====Specific contributions=====
Some of the story content for Fallout: New Vegas that Sawyer worked on include the game's ending at the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, as well as the initial concepts for all of the Mojave VaultsJoshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011:Question: "Who in particular comes up with the indivual stories for each vault? Chris Avellone? The whole team? Obviously some have movie inspirations. But others seem just.. Fucked up and bizarre :/"Joshua Sawyer: "I wrote the basic concepts for F:NV's vaults but individual designers fully fleshed the concepts out and implemented them. Vault 3: Akil Hooper, Vault 11: Eric Fenstermaker, Vault 19: Sydney Wolfram. Vault 21: Jorge Salgado. Vault 22: Jesse Farrell, Vault 34: Sydney Wolfram." and the companions and their character arcs (all of which were later fleshed out by other designers).Q&A session with Josh Sawyer during a live charity stream. (reference begins at 9:11:11) He was, however, directly responsible for Arcade Gannon's writing, as well as that of Chief Hanlon and Aaron Kimball's speech at Hoover Dam. Sawyer wrote basic high-level documents concepting major locations in the game, before being fleshed out by others.Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2010:Question: "Whose idea was Searchlight? I like the backstory a lot, particularly the pre-war part."Joshua Sawyer: "I wrote the basic high-level design documents for all major locations in the game. For Searchlight the high-level design for the back story was essentially "Guys carrying waste from San Onofre stop in Searchlight when war breaks out, local police tell them to park the trucks in the fire department, one takes off for Cottonwood Cove hoping to get as far away from the blast centers as possible."Denise McMurry did all of the actual "for real" area design for Searchlight including writing all of the logs for the area." Some examples of this include Quarry Junction,Q&A session with Josh Sawyer during a live charity stream. (reference begins at 8:42:42) Camp Searchlight and Camp Forlorn Hope.Fallout: New Vegas 10th Anniversary Charity Stream (reference starts at 2:39:28)Joshua Sawyer: "'How long was spent designing Camp Forlorn Hope?' Uh, quite a while, that was largely Charlie Staples, our lead area designer. Charlie Staples and I conceived it and then Charlie did, I think... almost all the core design work and dialogues in there. Yeah, that was a lot of work." He also came up with the wrecked Highwayman, reusing a similar location idea from Van Buren.Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011:Question: "Okay, whose idea was the Wrecked Highwayman? F-in awesome nostalgic moment, even made me start replaying Fallout 2 again."Joshua Sawyer: "Mine. I wanted to have a Highwayman trunk full of MFCs and the Tanker FOB in Van Buren."
Quests that Sawyer concepted include Volare!Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011:Question: "Who thought up the Boomers, Nellis and the "Volare!" mission? They're by far my favorite faction and missions of the games. Great job guys."Joshua Sawyer: "John Gonzalez came up with the Boomers. I came up with the basics of Volare! and Akil Hooper did the actual development of the quest." and The Legend of the Star;Joshua Sawyer: "finally throwing out the tootsie roll pop wrappers that were the inspiration for The Legend of the Star in fallout: new vegas"Twitter - Archived he also co-wrote The White Wash with Jeff Husges and wrote the characters of Tom Anderson, Mean SonofabitchJoshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2012:"I really like "The White Wash" quest. It was really well done and left with a moral dilemma that still screws over someone (The NCR, who's approaching a food shortage or Westside, who're trying to be self-sufficient). Can you give props to who wrote it?"Joshua Sawyer: "Thanks. Jeff Husges and I created The White Wash. I like how the dilemma played out, but the mechanics/flow of the quest were not that great (my fault, not Jeff's)."Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011:"I just would like to compliment you on the design of Westside. I think many players overlook it but its diversity and resourcefulness are especially striking when compared to a more emphasized area like Freeside. Whoever the world builder was did well too"Joshua Sawyer: "Thanks. Most of the content of Westside was developed by Jeff Husges, though I wrote a few of the characters (Anderson, Meansonofabitch), John Gonzalez wrote some (maybe all?) of the characters in Casa Madrid, and Jorge Salgado developed the Thorn. Scott Everts did most of the world building." and Ranger Milo.Josh Sawyer Fallout 4 Project Mojave Mod Stream 13.11.2021 (reference starts at 1:17:12)Joshua Sawyer: "I wrote Ranger Milo, maybe? I don't remember him being very good, but I think I wrote him." Sawyer also came up with the concepts for the new creatures in the base game, including cazadoresQuestion: "Do you ever get sick of 'what masochistic person thought of cazadores,' and what would you say has been your favorite project to work on?"Joshua Sawyer: "No, because I love cazadores and how they mess with players. I felt like Fallout needed a serious mutated insect enemy and came up with the basic idea for the cazador after seeing a picture of a tarantula hawk. From the first time I saw player responses to Brian’s concept art on the Bethesda forums, I knew people were going to dramatically underestimate them as enemies."(Tumblr - Archived) and night stalkers.Fallout: New Vegas 10th Anniversary Charity Stream Part 3 (reference starts at 41:58)Joshua Sawyer: "I designed the cazadores and the night stalkers. Actually all the new monsters in the base game."
Regarding Sawyer's systems design on Fallout: New Vegas, he was responsible for much of the design surrounding the game's weapons and ammunition. He also developed many of the perks, with some specific examples including Cherchez La Femme, Confirmed Bachelor,Q&A session with Josh Sawyer during a live charity stream. (reference begins at 10:12:23) Terrifying Presence,Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011Question: "Who came up with the Terrifying Presence perk? It owns."Joshua Sawyer: "Thanks. I did, but I wish it had more uses or a more general use in combat. As-is, it's very special-case." Jury Rigging,Fallout: New Vegas 10th Anniversary Charity Stream Part 3 (reference starts at 39:46)Joshua Sawyer: "Yeah, the Jury Rigging perk was my idea. It was like, there was so many times where I was like, 'aw, this is is so similar or it feels close enough that I could use it to repair but it wasn't exact.' I suggested Jury Rigger, I don't remember who implemented Jury Rigger, it was probably Frank Kowalkowski? Might have been Justin Reynard." Dine and Dash, and Ghastly Scavenger.Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011:Question: "Who came up with the Meat of Champions, Dine and Dash, and Ghastly Scavenger perks? I thought the cannibalism options complemented hardcore mode survivalism well. Being rewarded for consuming the leader of every significant faction was really satisfying."Joshua Sawyer: "Jason Bergman came up with Meat of Champions. I came up with Dine and Dash and Ghastly Scavenger." He also made the decision to implement Wild Wasteland as a trait,Fallout: New Vegas 10th Anniversary Charity Stream (reference starts at 4:13:42)Joshua Sawyer: "'What was the motivation for making Wild Wasteland an optional trait and am I myself a fan of this decision?' I was worried about Wild Wasteland being something that you could flip on and off in the console, I thought it might cause bugs if you could just turn it on and off at random. Or not at random, but whenever you wanted. So we made it a trait, which... and the reason for making it optional in the first place is, um... some people on the team really wanted to do the wacky stuff, and other people really did not want it to be in the game and thought that it ruined the tone. So I said, 'well, you can put it in, but it'll all be sequestered behind this Wild Wasteland trait.'" and worked on the development and balance of skills.Fallout: New Vegas 10th Anniversary Charity Stream Part 3 (reference starts at 45:17)Joshua Sawyer: "'Was combining Small Guns and Big Guns back together an uncontested change?' The only people who contested it were Feargus Urquhart and Chris Parker. Nobody else contested it. And I was like, 'It's fine.' [laughter] They're like, 'I think it's gonna do this-' I'm like, 'Nah. Nah.' That was my feedback, like 'Nah, it's fine.'"Fallout: New Vegas 10th Anniversary Charity Stream Part 3 (reference starts at 46:13)Joshua Sawyer: "Yeah, Big Guns, like at first, I tried to... design low-level Big Guns. So the goal in combining them was that I just wanted there to be more stuff available at the beginning of the game for everybody to use. And it was just really difficult, it felt very forced. Yeah, 'low-level Big Guns?' It just didn't work very well. I was making up like industrial things like rivet guns and stuff like that. I'm like, 'Ehhh, I dunno.' And once I just said, 'No, there's just Guns' and I split up all the weapons that were previously in Big Guns. Is it a missile launcher? Then it's Explosives. Is it a minigun? Then it's in Guns. Is it a laser Gatling gun? Then it's in Energy Weapons. And that was fine."
Additionally, Sawyer wrote and sang the songs "Streets of New Reno," "New Vegas Valley," "Cobwebs and Rainbows" and "Home on the Wastes" as featured in-game.
For New Vegas add-ons, Sawyer was the project director of Honest Hearts and Gun Runners' Arsenal; his contributions to the other add-ons mainly consisted of weapon design.Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011:Question: "What level of involvement did you have with the design of the New Vegas DLC's?"Joshua Sawyer: "I designed the weapons for Dead Money and was the project director for Honest Hearts."Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011:Question: "Were you involved in the development of Gun Runners' Arsenal?"Joshua Sawyer: "Yes, I was the project director." On Honest Hearts, Sawyer wrote the main story, concepted all of the main characters and performed more systems design. He was responsible for writing Joshua Graham and Daniel, and implemented the Zion tribal languages.Fallout: New Vegas 10th Anniversary Charity Stream (reference starts at 2:47:49)Joshua Sawyer: "'Am I responsible for the Zion native language having German elements?' Yes. Because when I did motorcycle touring through the American Southwest, I noticed a lot of German... and French tourists. And Dutch tourists. And so my idea was that German... a group of German tourists wound up with these refugees and their language just blended together." For Gun Runners' Arsenal, Sawyer was responsible for all of the design on the add-on, except for some scripting.
=====Post-release=====
Since the release of Fallout: New Vegas and its add-ons, Sawyer has remained active in the Fallout community. He answered fan-submitted questions for several years on the now-defunct website Formspring, and an archive of his posts exists on this wiki. In 2011, he created the JSawyer mod, an unofficial ESP for New Vegas that implemented many balance changes and gameplay tweaks that he wished to have in the official version of the game.Fallout: New Vegas 10th Anniversary Charity Stream (reference starts at 4:15:30)Joshua Sawyer: "'Are the changes in your mod changes you wanted to do but the team disagreed, or were they things you thought up after release?' They were things that I decided I liked but wasn't sure if the Fallout 3 audience would like. So, and I knew we didn't have time to like, screw around with that stuff. [laughter]. So, I just decided to let it go, and after the game launched, I was like 'hey!'" Sawyer no longer maintains or updates the mod himself; a re-mastered version created by other fans is available on Nexus Mods.JSawyer Ultimate Edition In 2020, Sawyer hosted a weekend charity stream to honor New Vegas 10th anniversary.
===Other work===
As design director at Obsidian, Sawyer took on leadership and design roles in the development of Pillars of Eternity and its sequel, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. He also led the development and writing of Pentiment.
==Employment history==
==Credits==
===Fallout series===
===Other work===
==Behind the scenes==
* While at Black Isle Studios, Sawyer mentioned that he would like to make a Fallout: Resource Wars spin-off.RPGDot interview with J.E. Sawyer:RPGDot: "If you could do any game, regardless of money and developing time, what would it be?"Joshua Sawyer: "An adventure game based off of Norton Juster's Phantom Tollbooth children's book. I'd also like to make a rules-light Delta Green RPG, a light-future Earth adventure/RPG with strong art deco and art nouveau visual themes, and a pre-Fallout "Resource Wars" game set in collapsing Europe (during the U.K.'s invasions of the Middle East)."
* Sawyer often listened to Moya while writing for New Vegas.Joshua Sawyer on Something Awful Forums
* Sawyer met some of the celebrity voice actors in Fallout: New Vegas, including Zachary Levi, Matthew Perry, and Kris Kristofferson, as well as Felicia Day (though only briefly).Fallout: New Vegas 10th Anniversary Charity Stream (reference starts at 4:51:20)Joshua Sawyer: "'Did I get to meet any of the celebrity guest voice actors?' Yeah, I got to meet... uh, Zach Levi, I got to meet Matthew Perry, I got to meet Kris Kristofferson. I think maybe that was about it? I didn't meet Michael Dorn. I think I may have briefly met Felicia Day at the Fallout: New Vegas party, like the launch party in Vegas, but not for any extensive period of time."
* Sawyer has retrospectively said he wished that he could have resolved some of the issues with cultural depictions in Honest Hearts that appeared when the add-on was shipped, as many of parts of the add-on were different from how they were concepted.Joshua Sawyer on Tumblr (Frog Helms Fan Club)
* Sawyer's online usernames include J.E. Sawyer or JESawyer, as well as rope kid, Orpheus, or baby goat.Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2012:Question: "Are you secretly Treyster or Gabriel on the Bethesda Fallout forums? They seem akin to your talking style/view points."Joshua Sawyer: "I'm not secretly anyone. Online, I usually J.E. Sawyer or JESawyer as my username, but occasionally rope kid, Orpheus, or baby goat." 
==Gallery==
Josh Sawyer removing spokes from a bicycle wheel.jpg|Sawyer working on a bicycle wheel
Sawyer bazooka.jpg|Sawyer in 2010
J.E. Sawyer 2020 Twitter.jpg|Sawyer in 2020
Young Joshua Sawyer.png|Sawyer as a young legionnaire
==Videos==
Matt Chat 171 Josh Sawyer on Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights|Sawyer talks Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 3 and other Obsidian games
Matt Chat 172 Josh Sawyer on Fallout New Vegas|Continued
The PC Gamer Show Episode 2 Pillars of Eternity, Fallout New Vegas, Divinity Original Sin|The PC Gamer Show Episode 2 9:28—17:08
Choice Architecture, Player Expression, and Narrative Design in Fallout New Vegas|2012 Game Developers Conference; Choice Architecture, Player Expression, and Narrative Design in Fallout: New Vegas
Process for Developing Locations and Characters in Fallout- New Vegas|Josh Sawyer on the development process for locations and characters of Fallout: New Vegas
==External links==
Interviews
* Josh Sawyer on Fallout: New Vegas (Giant Bomb - May 4, 2010)
* Bethesda Blog: Inside the Vault - Josh Sawyer (Bethesda Softworks - May 5, 2010)
* Fallout: New Vegas interview (Gamereactor - September 28, 2010)
* Why Fallout: New Vegas is famous for its freedom (Story Mode - October 8, 2021)
Livestreams
* 2nd Annual Extra Life Marathon Stream - 48-Hours For the Kids! (Obsidian Entertainment - November 2016)Note: The Fallout: New Vegas segment of this stream runs from about the 7 hour to the 11 hour mark in the Twitch video, and features Sawyer and Mikey Dowling.
* Fallout: New Vegas 10th Anniversary Twitch streams: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 (Twitch livestream - October 2020)
Other
* I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me. (RPG Codex article by Sawyer - December 16, 2002)
* Do (Say) The Right Thing: Choice Architecture, Player Expression, and Narrative Design in Fallout: New Vegas (GDC presentation - March 2012)
* Reputation Overload - The Evolution of RPG Reputation Mechanics (YouTube presentation - April 5, 2020)
* Fallout: New Vegas Developers React to 10 Minute Speedrun (IGN, with Jorge Salgado - March 13, 2021)
* Twitter thread explaining the team's responsibilities on New Vegas (December 17, 2022)
==References==
Notes
Category:Interplay Entertainment and Black Isle Studios employees
Category:Obsidian Entertainment employees
Category:Fallout: New Vegas musicians
Category:Fallout: New Vegas designers and writers
Category:Van Buren designers and writers
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