×
Create a new article
Write your page title here:
We currently have 69,185 articles on Fallout Wiki. Type your article name above or click on one of the titles below and start writing!



Fallout Wiki
69,185Articles

Joshua "Josh" Sawyer is a video game designer active in the role playing game genre. Sawyer was the lead designer of Van Buren until November 2003. At Obsidian Entertainment, he was the lead designer and project director of Fallout: New Vegas.

Career

Black Isle Studios (1999-2003)

Starting as a web designer at Black Isle Studios, he quickly worked his way up the ladder to an associate designer position and then lead designer on Icewind Dale II.

While at Black Isle, he was known for coming up with the "Ex-Presidents" project naming system. When Interplay closed down Black Isle Studios, many team members ended up at Obsidian Entertainment, which would eventually come to include J.E. Sawyer.

He was the lead designer of Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound (codenamed Jefferson) before it was canceled due to Interplay losing all rights to the Dungeons & Dragons license. He then moved on to Black Isle's Fallout 3 project, codenamed Van Buren, which used the same engine, as the lead technical designer. After Chris Avellone left Interplay, Sawyer became the lead designer of Van Buren. In November 2003, it was reported by Tor Thorsen of GameSpot that he had abruptly quit his role as lead designer of Van Buren to pursue other projects.

Midway Home Entertainment (2003-2005)

After the cancellation of Van Buren, Sawyer left Black Isle and joined Midway Home Entertainment to work on Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows. On July 19, 2005, GameSpot announced that he had left Midway. He was preceded in that move by game designer John Romero, who left work on the Gauntlet remake in June 2005.

Obsidian Entertainment (2005-present)

In 2005, Sawyer was employed by Obsidian Entertainment to work on Neverwinter Nights 2. Sawyer was the project director and lead designer of Aliens: Crucible, the canceled role-playing game based on the Alien film franchise. He was the project director and lead designer on Fallout: New Vegas, which was released in October 2010. He also wrote and performed several songs for Fallout: New Vegas: "Cobwebs and Rainbows," "Home on the Wastes," "New Vegas Valley," and "Streets of New Reno." Sawyer was made the project director and lead designer on Pillars of Eternity, a role-playing game inspired by classic computer role-playing games from the late 1990s.

On December 29, 2011, Sawyer released his personal mod, Mod:JSawyer, on his blogspot Diogenes Lamp. The mod fixed some major oversights made by the developers with statistics such as karma values and what weapons certain perks effect as well as making Fallout: New Vegas, in general, harder. Subsequent projects include the landmark Pillars of Eternity and its sequel, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, released to critical acclaim.

Employment history

FromToCompanyRole
March 1999November 2003Black Isle StudiosLead Designer
November 2003July 2005Midway Home EntertainmentLead Designer
July 2005PresentObsidian EntertainmentDesign Director

Credits

Fallout series

YearTitleCredited
2003Van BurenLead Designer
2010Fallout: New VegasLead Designer
Project Director
Additional songs
2010Dead MoneyWeapon Design
2011Honest HeartsProject Director
2011Old World BluesWeapon Design
2011Lonesome RoadWeapon Design
2011Gun Runners' ArsenalProject Director

Other work

YearTitleCredited
1999Planescape: TormentWeb Master
2000Icewind DaleDesigner
2002Icewind Dale IILead Designer
2004JESCreator
2006Neverwinter Nights 2Design Lead
2007Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the BetrayerAdditional Design
2010Alpha ProtocolAdditional Design
2015Pillars of EternityLead Designer
Project Director
2015Pillars of Eternity: The White MarchLead Designer
Project Director
2018Pillars of Eternity II: DeadfireProject Director
2019The Outer WorldsDesign Director
2022PentimentDirector

Notes

Joshua Sawyer's online usernames include J.E. Sawyer or JESawyer, as well as rope kid, Orpheus, or baby goat.[1]

Behind the scenes

Gallery

Videos

Pillars of Eternity, Fallout New Vegas, Divinity Original Sin with Josh Sawyer
Process for Developing Locations and Characters in Fallout New Vegas
Josh Sawyer on Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights
Josh Sawyer on Fallout New Vegas
Reputation Overload The Evolution of RPG Reputation Mechanics
Josh Sawyer Twitch Charity Stream - Fallout New Vegas Part 2

External links

References

  1. 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."
    (Joshua Sawyer on Formspring)
  2. RPGDot interview with J.E. Sawyer: RPGDot: If you could do any game, regardless of money and developing time, what would it be?
    J.E. 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)."
  3. Joshua Sawyer on Something Awful Forums
  4. 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."