Fallout: New Vegas - J.E. Sawyer is Project Lead

One can only hope J.E. Sawyer gets to ship a game this time 'round…word via the RPG Codex forums from Josh is that he is heading up Fallout: New Vegas-

Yes. I'm the project director and lead designer. I can't complain.

More information.

Pardon my ignorance but who is he?

website adminstrator at BIS during the development of BG and PST, designer on Icewind Dale, Lead on ID2, Lead on Jefferson (Baldur's Gate: The Black Hound) and Van Buren (Fallout 3, both unreleased), Lead on Gauntlet (with John Romero, not credited), Second Lead on NWN2 (after Ferret went to BioWare) and Lead on Alien (canceled).

3 out of 4 projects he was lead(not counting Gauntlet) were canceled
I don't have high hopes for this one

(with John Romero, not credited)

The co-founder of id?

Obsidian does a good job with RPGs and Van Buren had a lot of potential. Kotor2 could have been great if it was ever finished and NWN2 wasn't really my cup of tea but it was a well put together game.

I'm cautiously optimistic at this news. I haven't even touched Fallout 3 yet, heard it was everything I feared it was going to be. Don't kid yourselves, this is going to be a FPS but if Obsidian is allowed to fix the character system and combat mechanics of the fallout 3 engine there's hope.

From what I remember of the Van Buren forums JE "gets" fallout. Also Feargus Urquhart is in charge over at Obsidian.

Best Case: This is what we all hoped Fallout3 would be when it was announced by Bethesda.
Worst Case: Another ignorable title and we blame everything that sucks on Bethesda so we don't have to start hating Obsidian too.

This has to be good news. Hurrah!

Fantastic news. We've yet to see any of his work released where he was given real freedom but he is a game systems scholar with good insight into systems design. And I'm sure this one will get released.