Fallout: New Vegas director on the art of making sure all your points in persuasion aren't wasted: It's 'all about feelings … but you use numbers to arrive at that feeling'

How do you ensure a player's character-building choices feel worthwhile in an RPG, whether they dumped all their points into lockpicking or went heavy on persuasion? Josh Sawyer, seasoned RPG designer and studio design director at Obsidian, says that—like weapon tuning—it's a vibes-based art, but great documentation and a good dataset certainly don't hurt. 

In a recent YouTube video, Sawyer said it's important to make skill selections matter as soon as possible. If something's going to be part of gameplay...