The Making of Fallout: New Vegas Comic-Con Panel

G4 TV offers a write-up of this impressively-named panel that, by the looks of it, wasn't as impressive in content, with Obsidian's creative director sitting together with Fallout: New Vegas lead creative designer John Gonzalez and Dungeon Siege 3 creative lead George Ziets to share some (scant) insights into the process that goes into making Fallout: New Vegas.
He tackled the problem by going back to the basics and examining what makes Fallout great. They wanted a "Signature City," like D.C. is to Fallout 3, so Gonzales and the Obsidian team hit on Las Vegas.

The next step: Research. That means more than just replaying the first three Fallout games (and Fallout: Tactics, I suppose), it means cracking open books and plugging in the DVD player. Gonzales listed the following as inspirations for New Vegas:

* Las Vegas: An Unconventional History by Michelle Ferrari and Stephen Ives
* Oceans 11 (The original, not the terrible George Clooney movie)
* The Road
* Six String Samurai
* Vegas Vic (The iconic cowboy statue that presides over Vegas's "Glitter Gulch"
* Famous gangster Bugsy Siegel
* The Rat Pack (naturally)
* Howard Hughes
* And a ton more