If you've played New Vegas, you're familiar with Caesar's Legion. Slavedriving, overtly fascistic, and wrapped in the aesthetics of the Roman Empire⁠—but with football pads instead of lorica segmentata. It seems like the kind of faction that would be hard to present as anything but one-dimensional, abject evil.

As it turns out, giving the faction's leader some real substance—even allowing him to make his case in full—was lead writer John Gonzalez's precise objective, though he sometimes worries he did too good a job on that front.

"[I had] to write a character who had tried to present a robust argument for authoritarianism," he told PC Gamer associate editor Ted Litchfield. But now, after seeing the rise of fascist movements in the intervening 15 years? "I was like, could we back off of that now?"

"One of the things about writing fiction, if you're going to try to write it in a way that's not preaching to a choir, or that's not propaganda," Gonzalez argued, "is that you have to try to make your adversaries as strong as possible.

"If you want to write a story where one of your main themes is actually freedom, like liberty from tyranny, you can't just make your tyrants cardboard villains. You have to make them as substantial as possible in some way. That was really the driving force with Caesar, but occasionally I've wondered if that was done a little too well."

If you haven't played New Vegas, you can meet with Caesar directly and pick his brain at length. He is a cruel nationalist and imperialist, but remarkably well spoken⁠—partially owed to his education with the ironically humanist, pacifist faction, The Followers of the Apocalypse⁠—and backs up his every action with detailed, if heartless and objectionable, political theory.

"Long-term stability at all costs," Caesar says in a notably self-serving and subjective assessment of the Pax Romana, Rome's golden age. "The individual has no value beyond his utility to the state, whether as an instrument of war, or production."

It's almost comical how deep the rabbit hole goes (the norm for Obsidian RPGs). When Caesar cites Hegelian dialectics, the player character can ask, "'Hegelian dialectics?' What's that?" and receive Caesar's full, if highly debatable and biased, explanation. Gonzales gives credit to Josh Sawyer for that bit, though: "I don't know that you can spend a whole day with Josh without hearing about Hegelian dialectics."

When PC Gamer's Litchfield mentioned he went down this rabbit hole with Caesar at only 15, before he had even heard terms like "dialectical materialism," Gonzales laughed and replied, "Hopefully … we don't have to exculpate you from some kind of flirtation with dictatorship or authoritarianism."

It's easy to see where Gonzalez's unease comes from. You can still see social media threads pop up every now and again trying to make a case for Caesar's ideals and actions, and we all exist only a few clicks away from a Discord server where some nasty freak is proudly rocking a Caesar's Legion profile picture while putting the most vile things you've ever heard in writing.

While every Fallout game's story has intense political implications (it's literally set in the ruins of society), none hold so close a lens up to the warring philosophies in the wasteland as New Vegas. For more from this interview, Gonzalez also spoke at length about Mr. House, another New Vegas character he wrote, and the robotics mogul's disturbing resonance with modern Silicon Valley magnates.

You can also hear more from Gonzalez and other Fallout developers in a series retrospective in the upcoming issue of PC Gamer's print magazine. Read all about videogames, without ruining your sleep schedule with blue light! What will they think of next?

Fallout and Elder Scrolls writer Emil Pagliarulo has explained the difference in writing between the two series and why Fallout may be a bit harder to deal with.

In dense RPGs like Bethesda's Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, there are a ton of decisions to be made, and in cases like the Obsidian-published Fallout: New Vegas, there are a ton of potential outcomes and different factions vying for you to help them out, and it's never exactly clear who is the right choice to side with for the good of humanity (well, maybe not Caesar's Legion that one's pretty obvious).

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Pagliarulo explains, "I think it's easier in a fantasy game like The Elder Scrolls, where a lot of fantasy tropes are 'there's a big bad evil.'" He adds, "the differentiation between good and evil is pretty distinct sometimes." But with the likes of Fallout, Paglarulo notes "there are a lot of shades of gray".

Paglarulo, saying, "I think in Fallout 4, especially with the Brotherhood and Institute, no matter what they do, you have to sit back and go 'maybe they have a point'." He elaborates, for the Institute "Are the synths just really toasters? Are they just machines? We created them, do they deserve to have freedom?" While "The Brotherhood is a bunch of hard asses, but does humanity really deserve to be in control of this technology that they are clearly not using responsibly?"

Although those questions are perhaps what makes Fallout such an engaging series, I say as I start up my fifth New Vegas playthrough.

Ex-Bethesda lead reveals origins of Fallout's text and iconic "F*** You": "I was honestly expecting them to tell me to delete it"

Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive have been enjoying a record-breaking awards run with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - which recently took home more trophies than any other title in The Game Awards history - but at least two of its awards elsewhere have been revoked.

The Indie Game Awards 2025 took place on Thursday, where Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won both Game of the Year and Debut Game. Both awards were already a little controversial since Clair Obscur isn't exactly what you think of when you think indie - it has a publisher and a budget stretching into the millions of dollars.

But just yesterday, The Indie Game Awards retracted both awards, explaining that the studio's use of generative AI during production goes against the organization's rules and a developer representative hadn't been entirely honest about that fact before submitting the game, per its FAQ page.

"The Indie Game Awards have a hard stance on the use of gen AI throughout the nomination process and during the ceremony itself," the awards body wrote. "When it was submitted for consideration, a representative of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. In light of Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of gen AI art in production on the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 premiere, this does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination."

For those out of the loop, Clair Obscur launched with what seemed to be AI-generated textures in at least one area. When the odd texture was spotted and circulated online, Sandfall quietly patched it out and replaced it without a word.

"While the assets in question were patched out and it is a wonderful game, it does go against the regulations we have in place. As a result, the IGAs nomination committee has agreed to officially retract both the Debut Game and Game of the Year awards."

Instead, the organization's Game of the Year award has gone to the equally-deserving Blue Prince, while Debut Game is in Sorry We're Closed's hands.

"We love making games more than we love managing": Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 lead says "it's good to have limitations," so the RPG studio won't "scale up" for any future projects