'Yeah, that didn't suck. That was good': Fallout: New Vegas lead writer says the Survivalist's journal in Honest Hearts is 'one of my favorite bits of content that I've written in a game'

One of the most beloved NPCs in Fallout's history is a pile of bones in the sand. The story of the Survivalist, Randall Clark, is not the biggest nor the flashiest told in the Fallout series, but it's remembered as one of the most moving and tragic. It maybe also doesn't hurt that getting to know this guy post-mortem can get you kitted out with his sick armor and custom rifle⁠—Bethesda even made a limited run of statues of the character.

Scattered throughout New Vegas' Honest Hearts expansion, Clark's journals are an autobiographical account of the bombs falling and his experiences (and eventual death) in the world that followed. It includes the loss of his family, his adventures as a solo survivalist, and run-ins with various others, like a group of children that he becomes caretaker for in his old age, unwittingly laying the groundwork for a new tribal culture you meet in the present day, the Sorrows.

For New Vegas lead writer John Gonzalez, it was one of the only things he wrote for the RPG's lauded series of DLCs before leaving Obsidian in March 2011 to work on Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. As he recently told PC Gamer associate editor Ted Litchfield, he regards it among the best stuff he's written, period. "It's one of my favorite bits of content that I've written in a game," he said.

New Vegas lead Josh Sawyer assigned the character to him with a rough outline: "This was somebody who was trained, had military training, and so was able to survive in these arduous circumstances," Gonzalez recalled. "I don't remember if the brief had more than that. It may have. I think that, as I recall, I sort of worked out the story as I went."

Holotapes and journal entries are the rare opportunity in the dialog-heavy, choice-driven RPG genre "to write something in prose," Gonzalez said. While characters like Yes Man were created specifically to account for the player, the story of Randall Clark could be told in a vacuum, where nothing the player did could affect the outcome. "It was an opportunity to, at a small scale, do traditional storytelling," he said.

"I just found it to be a very affecting, kind of tragic story," Gonzalez said. "It hits certain notes of adventure that are entertaining and fun, but the underlying guilt that he carries, and the loss of his family, and the attempts to start again, and how that goes wrong, and then this very sad but very beautiful ending of his life.

"I don't know where that stuff came from exactly, any more than any other writer really knows exactly where stuff comes."

Since the DLC's release, Gonzalez said he's "read over the stuff four or five times" and thinks to himself, "'Okay, yeah, that didn't suck. That was good.'

"I remember⁠—it's like you discover this as you're writing it⁠—but the moment there's this elderly couple that saw the explosion, and so they're blinded, and he shoots them through the head simultaneously," Gonzalez recalled.

"It's a very calculated act. It's a practical act, but he actually does it in a way that is intended to not have anyone experience shock or horror or loss, so that they die simultaneously, which also, in some way, echoes the loss that he's had⁠," said Gonzalez. "He's trying to spare a couple the loss that he's experiencing, knowing that his family has just been killed. God, you're going to get me emotional if I talk about it."

You can read more insights from Gonzalez, as well as all sorts of other Fallout-related stories, in the latest issue of PC Gamer's print magazine.