Josh Sawyer says New Vegas factions feel real because members disagree

Fallout: New Vegas's factions are central to the game's texture, and director Josh Sawyer told The Examined Game podcast that one of the team's goals was "to make sure that the people in the factions felt like they were humans that were their own people." Sawyer argued that portraying factions as monolithic flattens choices: "When a faction feels monolithic," Sawyer continued, "Where every member of the faction is just like, 'I'm this guy, I believe in this thing, and this is the thing that everyone believes in.' One, nobody's like that, and two, it paints too simple of a picture for the player and their decision making." He pointed to the New California Republic as an example of that complexity: "I think one of the things that people really wrestled with, with something like NCR, is that NCR is composed of a lot of different people, and some of those people are extremely virtuous and well-meaning, and some are well-meaning but bad-doing, and some are actually malicious and petty and they suck.

That's a democracy, right?

new vegas, josh sawyer, factions, ncr, new california, examined game, decision making, democracy, people, monolithic