Fallout: New Vegas dev on how iconic ending slides for minor side quests came to life: “It’s mostly arbitrary”

Fallout: New Vegas lead designer Josh Sawyer went on a trip down memory lane in a new YouTube video and discussed how Obsidian Entertainment cherry-picked side quests that deserved their own memorable “where are they now” ending slides, which had pretty much become a signature of the game.

According to Sawyer, the decision was, more often than not, based on how developers felt about certain quests. If a quest was interesting enough, it got its dedicated side quest ending slides in Fallout: New Vegas. It had less to do with whether the events were critical to Fallout: New Vegas's main storyline.

Josh Sawyer gave a specific example of the Fallout: New Vegas side quest called “Flags of Our Foul-Ups,” which ended up getting its own ending slide purely based on a particular player choice and outcome.

In his video “Ending Slides in RPGs,” Josh Sawyer took the time to answer a viewer’s question about whether individual writers or creative directors decided which side quests would make it into the final game.

Surprisingly, Sawyer stated in the video that it was mostly up to the director and that decisions boiled down to pure vibes. The viewer, Lorena, asked, “When deciding what does or doesn’t get an ending slide…?” Sawyer answered that “it’s mostly arbitrary,” with designers rarely micromanaging everything.

Sawyer further explained, “Usually, there’s stuff we kind of take for granted and assume is going to go in. For example: major choices at the end of the game, faction alliances… companions usually have their own sets of endings.”

But beyond the main beats, developers went with whatever felt fun and interesting for the ending slides. He continued, “It’s largely just based on stuff that we think is gonna be interesting and entertaining to the player. It’s not necessarily about how big or important the quest is.”

Continuing his monologue, Josh used the example of “Flags of Our Foul-Ups,” a small but thoroughly put-together NCR side quest written by former Obsidian designer Travis Stout. The gist of the quest is that the NCR soldiers are pretty incompetent, so they’ve been branded as the NCR Misfits.

Sawyer said, “There’s a bunch of NCR soldiers who suck. They’re just huge screw-ups, and they’re in trouble because they’re doing so badly.” Players can help them by improving or falsifying records, convincing them to improve their teamwork, or training them for combat. The worst option among these is handing them a combat drug called Psycho. 

Sawyer said, “I think it was that choice specifically that made us wonder: during the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, what would actually happen to these guys? It was the drug one where we were like, they’d probably turn into war criminals. They’d just go berserk and start killing all sorts of people who weren’t even involved in the conflict. We decided, ‘Let’s do ending slides for that.’”

The ending slide for this side quest resulted in one of the darkest end-game slides in Fallout: New Vegas, which reads:

“Driven into a frenzy by their use of Psycho, the Misfits inflicted heavy casualties on the Legion during the defense of Camp Golf. At first, they were commended for their valor, but eventually, desperate for more of the chem, they turned on travelers in Outer Vegas. For their dishonorable conduct, the NCR court-martialed and executed them by firing squad.”

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