John Gonzalez

John R. Gonzalez is a developer who worked at Obsidian Entertainment as the lead creative designer on Fallout: New Vegas.

Work on the Fallout series
John was responsible for writing the central plot and conflict of Fallout: New Vegas, as well as the creation of Benny, Robert House, Vulpes Inculta, Ricky, Stella, and the logs of Randall Clark. In addition, he wrote Yes Man, Caesar (with Joshua Sawyer suggesting that Caesar should present his rationale in the framework of Hegelian dialectics, as well as a discussion on his justification, drive and vision), and Victor. "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)." Josh Sawyer Formspring January 3, 2011 answers He was also responsible for the creation and development of Lanius, the writing of Cold, Cold Heart, some of, if not all, the characters in the Casa Madrid Apartments, and Davison. He also conceived and designed the Boomers, added the assertive upgrade dialogue for Yes Man to clear potential player fears of others using him, and came up with the number of ICBMs aimed at Las Vegas.

Other work
Gonzalez started his career in the games industry at Outrage Entertainment writing Alter Echo and the canceled Rubu Tribe. Before joining Obsidian Entertainment John spent two years in Shanghai as the lead narrative designer of Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's EndWar. John later left Obsidian to be the lead writer for Guerrilla Games' Horizon: Zero Dawn. He is currently the narrative director at Smilegate Barcelona.