Fallout: New Vegas Tech Producer “AMAA” Reddit Q&A

I suppose it doesn’t hurt to point out that Jason Fader, tech producer on Fallout: New Vegas and now currently the head of indie studio Iocaine Studios (currently working on their own, unfortunately non-RPG, Kickstarter drive), has replied to all sorts of questions on Reddit, yesterday night. While Jason worked at various developers and on various projects, including World of Warcraft as a tools progammer, most of the questions ended up being about Obsidian’s own take on the Fallout universe. Either way, there’s plenty to quote for us:

Just got Fallout NV with the steam sale. Crossing my fingers. What’s your favorite DLC for New Vegas?

Old World Blues, by far! I loved the weekly reviews we would have of the build and cracking up at the new comedic lines that would go in. The voice acting talent was also great (Mmm… Doc Venture).

Speaking of Old World Blues, what gave you or your team the ideas to make it?

This DLC was the one where we “had fun with it”. Any zany idea we wanted to do was fielded by our project director, Chris Avellone. Some ideas were used, others would not quite fit. We all rallied behind the theme of it since the concept itself was pure genius and hilarity. I often joked that OWB was “Wild Wasteland, the DLC”.

As for where the idea itself came from, I believe it was from Chris’s love of retro scifi and wanting to tell a story that was compelling, yet funny at times for the player.

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Thank you for your work (and Obsidian in general) for FNV and its DLC. FNV is definitely one of my favorite RPGs ever and it gave us Fallout 2 fans great satisfaction. The references were small but all of them put a huge smile on my face.

One of my favorite parts of FNV was its DLC and how varied they are. It was awesome that you guys were able to step away from the traditional gameplay and try new things with DLC. I really liked Dead Money especially; that DLC was a blast to play on Hardcore mode. One of my favorite Fallout characters was from Dead Money, the one who didn’t have much to say.

As a lead producer for the FNV DLC, what did you do? Contribute ideas? Made sure things were on schedule? Honest Hearts was a wonderful piece of DLC too, the environments were really cool.

Who was your favorite FNV companion? Where there things you had to cut that you wanted to include in the shipped game?

Thank you so much for the appreciation 🙂

As lead producer, I worked closely with the project director, Chris Avellone (and Josh Sawyer for Honest Hearts) to schedule and manage the team. Most of my team management was through my producers, and they in turn would schedule their teams. I also acted as the liaison for the team to Bethesda, communicating their feedback and facilitating any actions needed. On top of this, I was in charge of scheduling/managing the FNV patches. It was a tough balancing act to work on DLC’s and patches at the same time, but I’m proud of my team and how hard they worked to make it all happen.

Honest Hearts was a great DLC! Josh went the extra mile (literally) and spent a week up in Zion National Park to ensure we got the area right.

Hmm… I think my favorite companion was ED-E. He didn’t say much, but that kid had heart!

I probably can’t talk about things that were cut, but there was an idea I had that didn’t get very far. I had an idea to do a Wild Wasteland radio station modeled after Coast to Coast AM. Players would need to have the Wild Wasteland perk, and upon getting that perk they would get a quest to find a “tinfoil hat”. Once they found the hat, wearing it would “tune” them into the radio station. The station itself was going to be an easter egg for the team where I voiced the show’s host, and members of the FNV team would voice the show’s callers. All of the calls would be a story the team member would think of, typically dealing with something weird/paranormal.

It was an early early idea that literally did not get past being an email. We didn’t do it since we’d need to localize everything, which would break the easter egg of the team’s voices being used :-/

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Why’d you leave Obsidian?

I was laid off in March with a bunch of the guys I worked on FNV with. I have no hard feelings about it. These things happen and Obsidian is a great studio. The following day most of us went out for drinks and that’s when I was being asked by everyone when I would start my own studio. I wasn’t planning on it at the time, but I wanted to keep this family together.

Some of them got jobs at other studios since they needed to support themselves. For the rest, they’re on my team and we’re having a blast working together. You can find out more about our project here 🙂

Ahh, cool. 🙂 Thanks for answering! Did you work on any other Obsidian games, btw?

Yup! I started there working on the Aliens RPG about a month before it was cancelled. After that I worked on FNV and the DLC’s. From there I worked on my own project that I had designed with a small team. That project wasn’t picked up, so I moved onto a next-gen project for several months up until the layoffs hit in March.