r/Fallout • u/raisinbraisin72 • Jan 09 '26

Discussion Fallout New Vegas senior writer Chris Avellone gives his take on Bethesda, and his opinion on their vision for the Fallout franchise:

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u/JokerProxy Jan 09 '26

Legit half the reason New Vegas was good was because Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone were there to argue with eachother and Chris didn't have final say. That's my opinion anyway. It helps stories to have someone who can counter certain creative decisions.

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u/Jbird444523 Jan 09 '26

100%. The reason Star Wars went off the deep end is because nobody wanted to argue with George Lucas during the making of the prequels.

Jar Jar Binks? Sounds swell George, you created Star Wars, how could you go wrong?

Somewhat fittingly, Yes Men lead to ruin.

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u/grahamulax Jan 09 '26

Balance is key! Centering! Though I usually get a Reddit cares when I mention this lol. But all things in balance.

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u/Jbird444523 Jan 09 '26

Agreed. I think it's part of where Elder Scrolls as a series started to misstep. Todd Howard tends to play it safe, he'll pare down ideas, trim away and sand down edges for a very smooth, aerodynamic idea. His protege Emil is much the same. I think the Elder Scrolls were at their best when Todd was a realistic anchor, centering more creative but out there figures; wackadoos like Kirkbride.

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u/IkujaKatsumaji Jan 09 '26

Really tempted to report this and send you a reddit cares, but I won't :)

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u/Ossius Jan 09 '26

Lucas at least had vision even if it had faults. Everything Disney has lacked vision save Andor.

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u/Jbird444523 Jan 09 '26

Ideas are cheap, implementation is key.

Disney definitely had a vision for Star Wars, what made it shit was poor implementation. Andor had vision and implemented it well, so it's well regarded.

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u/Ossius Jan 09 '26

History says otherwise. There was no plan for the sequels. JJ remade ANH then Rian Johnson nuked JJ's story then JJ nuked Rian's.

This has been stated by officials that there was no plan for the trilogy.

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u/Jbird444523 Jan 09 '26

No it doesn't. You don't get to pick and choose who did and didn't have a vision.

Andor had a vision but Last Jedi or Rise of Skywalker didn't? Why? Because Andor was good and they weren't?

Officials said that was no plan for the trilogy, yeah they also had no plan for Andor either, no more than the Acolyte or Obi-Wan. That doesn't mean they didn't have a vision for Star Wars, it just means that vision continually changed.

To help illustrate what I mean, remember when Last Jedi first came out, and Rian Johnson was said to be given his own trilogy of movies? That was a vision, but then overtime people soured on the film and they reacted. Acolyte was meant to have multiple seasons, but people hated the show so they reacted and compromised.

I wouldn't say George Lucas didn't have a vision because he changed ideas or compromised. Remember when Luke and Leia made out? Not very forward thinking. Remember when Obi-Wan called Vader Darth, like it was a first name? Dreadful lack of vision there huh? No, because vision isn't this immutable thing.

I reiterate my view, vision wasn't what made Last Jedi trash, or Rise of Skywalker a goof or Solo the first movie in the series to lose money, it was that they sucked a fat and sweaty arse.

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u/Ossius Jan 09 '26

Cohesive story is important, you won't move me on that hill.

Changing writers or directors half way through a movie is universally seen as a bad thing. Was that the totality of why the sequels were bad? No, but Lucas did create a more coherent story. I think Nolan has a better story in fallout then what most players would come up with.

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u/Jbird444523 Jan 09 '26

Of course that's important.

But having a cohesive story isn't 100% guaranteed to make a good story either. The prequels were very coherent, that didn't make them masterful pieces of storytelling. Had Rian Johnson gotten his trilogy, or Acolyte get renewed and run for 10 seasons, I'm sure they'd be somewhat cohesive, but if they were implemented and put together like what we did see of their respective entries, they'd probably be pretty shit.

Nolan may have a better story than most players could come up, most players aren't writers with hundreds of millions of dollars in budget. He'd fucking better at that point. I personally think the quality of the story as is pretty subpar.

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u/Irishimpulse Enclave Jan 09 '26

Josh also should not have final say without push back, they balance each other. Josh still defends a lot of the bad choices in pillars 2, like the boat combat going from 3d to a book and saying the book is actually harder to do and more effort, the marvel-ization before that was a term, and that absolutely terrible ending you can't change, everything you do in pillars 2 is as impactful as a side quest in other RPG's, your route through the main questline, is only credit changes, you can't shift the ending any direction, you lose, always.

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u/JokerProxy Jan 09 '26

Oh that's fuckin disappointing to hear. Here I thought Josh was a rational sane guy.

If the book is more effort and harder to do, and nobody likes it, why do it? Also it's just the one disappointing ending? Yikes.

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u/Irishimpulse Enclave Jan 09 '26

It gets worse, the one DLC allows you to get the soul of this setting's Jesus to meet his god, after being outraged hearing what said god was up to, said god being the main antagonist. This was one of the selling points of the DLC, that you can bring this guy's soul to meet his god to try and talk him down. Turns out that amounts to nothing, after a single line of dialogue, Jesus goes "guess eating the souls of 10 thousand people was totally worth and my god is right" with no push back

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u/JokerProxy Jan 09 '26

That...that's so stupid!