Whatever the Fallout TV show does with New Vegas lore, Josh Sawyer doesn’t care: “It was never mine”

The Obsidian design director on Pillars of Eternity II burnout and living with dead projects

What’s it like to watch a smash hit TV show set in the backyard of a game you’ve made? It’s a question which Fallout: New Vegas project director Josh Sawyer is uniquely qualified to answer.

“The show really does capture the aesthetic of Fallout 4 and 76 , while also feeling like it is set on the West Coast,” he says. “If you’re a fan, then you can see where the plot elements have been pulled from in previous entries. And if you’re new to it, thankfully, those plot elements are fairly straightforward. So I think it’s a good show for fans and a good show if you’re new to it, even though there’s a lot of stuff going on. I’m certainly interested to see where they’re going in the second season.”

By the time we speak, Sawyer has seen the finale of the Fallout show. But for three days prior, he was “inundated with the discourse”, as fans tweeted their worries and outrage directly to his account. “I understood why there was maybe some confusion or ambiguity,” he says. “I don’t think I necessarily would have jumped to the conclusions that other people did. But I could see why some people might be aggravated or annoyed.”

Sawyer himself, by contrast, is philosophical about the impact the TV show or any future Fallout entry might have on New Vegas. “This might sound weird, but whatever happens with it, I don’t care,” he says. “My attitude towards properties that I work on, and even characters that I create, is that I don’t own any of this stuff. It was never mine. And the thing that I made is what I made.”

Sawyer remains very proud of the New Vegas team’s work and believes the game stands on its own. “If later on other people working in the space do new things with it and change it, I’ll maybe have opinions on it, but I don’t get attached to things in that way,” he says. “I don’t feel like it’s healthy for me to be really invested in something I have no control over, frankly.

“There are things that I might watch and say, ‘I don’t think I would have taken this that way’, and then there are other things that I think are really cool. But it’s not my space, it was never my thing. I was a guest working in it. So I try to keep a level of distance between myself and the setting.”

Fallout: New Vegas was not, in fact, the first time Sawyer was invited to be a guest in the Fallout universe. In the dying days of legendary RPG studio Black Isle, he was made project lead of the game originally intended to be Fallout 3 . Codenamed Van Buren, it was an isometric RPG that closely resembled the earliest games in the series, rather than the first-person Bethesda sequels that came later.

Image credit:Amazon

For Sawyer, a longtime admirer of the original Fallout’s open-ended design, it was an extraordinary opportunity. But the development of Van Buren became apocalyptic in itself, as Black Isle owner Interplay slowly disintegrated. Sawyer resigned, believing he’d lost his one shot to work on a Fallout game. “It was a dream of mine,” he says. “Losing that hurt.”

This organisational dysfunction was typical of the environment in which Sawyer began his career. He spent years conceiving a sprawling Dungeons & Dragons RPG dubbed The Black Hound, only for Interplay to lose the rights to make it. He led the making of Icewind Dale II over a truncated period of just ten months - so that his bosses could cover the sudden gap left by the cancellation of another Black Isle RPG, named Torn.

Even after Sawyer landed at Obsidian, the cancellations kept on coming. While Obsidian is now part of Microsoft, it used to be a contractor - constantly vulnerable to the changing whims of the publishers it worked with. Sawyer devoted huge chunks of his career to promising games that were abruptly shut down, like an Aliens RPG. He lost 40 colleagues to the “very, very awful” layoffs in the wake of the doomed Xbox One exclusive Stormlands .

Although Sawyer doesn’t play down the impact of all this devastation, he’s capable of speaking about it with well-developed detachment. “I do have to maintain some emotional distance, because sometimes these things are completely out of my control,” he says. “And I need to be able to move on with my life and my career, frankly, when things go wrong. So I can’t really despair. I have to look at it and try to understand how things happened the way they did, what role I played in them, and how I can improve or protect against those things in the future.”

As a result of all this pain and upheaval, Sawyer has embraced a utilitarian attitude to his craft. “The successful early projects of my career were almost all content sequels or spin-offs of existing tech bases,” Sawyer says. “And it focused my mind very heavily on the production process. Very quickly I adapted to, ‘How can we make something fresh in a very short period of time, using what we have?’ It was a very lean and bang-for-buck approach to development.”

Image credit:Bethesda Softworks

That thinking served Sawyer well when Obsidian was given 18 months to make Fallout: New Vegas. “We took a shipped game and made a spin-off without really changing the underlying tech very much,” he says. “So we focused almost entirely on content. When it came out, it was criticised for playing very, very similarly to Fallout 3.”

Over time, however, fans have come to appreciate where Obsidian did put its time and energy. “Our team had the luxury of focusing on conversations and quests, and really making those as robust and dynamic as we could,” Sawyer says. “A lot of the philosophy that I approached New Vegas with was the philosophy of Fallout 1, or how I interpreted it. Fallout 1 was foundational for me in understanding how role-playing games should be made.”

While Sawyer notes that a lot of the quests in New Vegas are fairly straightforward - “not that fancy” - he says that players tend to celebrate the choice-driven standouts. “And they remember how the factions work and how flexible that is,” he says. “There was a lot of effort put into making sure you can twist and turn through the different factions and resolve those things how you want.” Players felt empowered by the fact that you didn’t have to kill anybody in New Vegas - yet you could kill anyone (“except for kids”).

“I think that’s what has lasted,” Sawyer says. “The initial impact where people said the gameplay feels very close to Fallout 3 is totally fair. But then as time stretches on, and people play them side by side, the fact that we had so much of our time to focus on the content, I think that’s what people were excited about.”

It’s very rare that a big-budget game is made in 18 months these days. In fact, many take half a decade. That shift has led to a rise in developer burnout - a risk which occupies Sawyer’s thoughts often in his current role as Obsidian’s studio design director. “Because these projects are so long, if they go wrong and you’re stuck in them for a long time, it can be extremely draining,” he says. “I have to be responsible with people’s time.”

Image credit:Obsidian Entertainment/Versus Evil

Recently, Sawyer tweeted that burnout had replaced crunch as the primary hazard of the game industry. “Even though some studios have very strict no-crunch policies, people are still being asked to do either impossible things, or things that they don’t really believe are for the good of the project,” he says. “And you eventually just start to tune out and feel very demoralised.” Burned out developers not only feel awful, Sawyer says, but do bad work and make irrational decisions. He speaks from personal experience.

“With Pillars Of Eternity II , we were in a position where we knew that we did not have enough time, nine months before we hit that wall,” Sawyer says. “We raised concerns to management, and the options were either to invest more time in it, or to cut scope and staff. And they didn’t want to do that.”

The problems were compounded when Sawyer was blocked from cutting a major feature - and when, midway through development, Obsidian committed to voicing every character in the game. “It was that feeling of accelerating towards a brick wall,” Sawyer says. “We knew that it was happening, and the closer we got to it, the more stressful it became. I and a lot of other people on the team became really harsh, and were snapping at people. I didn’t really recognise myself at a certain point because I had very little tolerance for time being wasted and questions and things like that. I was pushing people in a way I had never done on a game before.”

Eventually, Sawyer went home and sent a letter to Obsidian’s owners - to say that he wouldn’t return to work until the schedule was extended. “Every day I come in, I leave feeling worse than before,” he wrote. “I feel like I’m making the game worse every day. I just can’t do it.” The studio owners relented, and when Pillars Of Eternity II released, it reviewed well. “But it didn’t sell well, and that was very demoralising,” Sawyer says. “I was like, ‘Damn, I was this huge, awful asshole to this team’. And it felt like a big waste.” It took him a year afterwards to recover.

Image credit:Xbox Game Studios

When Microsoft bought Obsidian, Sawyer went to CEO Feargus Urquhart - and said that if he was going to stay at the company, he would need to work on a much smaller project. That turned out to be Pentiment , a narrative-driven murder mystery set in the Holy Roman Empire. It gave Sawyer a chance to heal. “Pentiment was a really great experience, the exact opposite,” he says. “A lot of people don’t come out of burnout, they have to limp through a lot more development. I’m in a very privileged position.”

From his first days at Black Isle, Sawyer had three dream projects: a D&D adaptation, a Fallout sequel, and a historical game. Now that he’s managed the hattrick, his goals are less specific, and more reflective of the lessons he’s strived to learn.

“There are a lot of games that sound like they’d be fun to make,” he says. “And I don’t have one idea I’ve got to make before I kick it, or feel like I need more success than I’ve had. I just want to make good things, and treat people well on those teams. And for them to feel like they grow and come out better than they went in.”

Fallout: New Vegas

iOS , PS3 , Xbox 360 , PC

Pentiment

Video Game

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

Video Game

Rock Paper Shotgun is better when you sign in

Sign in and join us on our journey to discover strange and compelling PC games.

All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

Rock Paper Shotgun is better when you sign in

Sign in and join us on our journey to discover strange and compelling PC games.