Yes Man Lets You Skip Fallout's Moral Mess—But Was That a Design Crime?

Fallout: New Vegas’ Yes Man questline promised players a clean escape from the Mojave’s moral quagmire—until it became a punchline for narrative cowardice.

John Gonzales, the game’s lead writer, later admitted the design “may have been a mistake”, conceding it let players “get through the game without getting your hands dirty”.

“The player has to be able to get through this game killing everyone they meet the moment they meet them, and also killing absolutely nothing at all,” Gonzales said. The Yes Man’s unkillable status—designed to grant total player agency—instead created a paradox.

It let players sidestep the Mojave’s “shades of gray” philosophy, where even the NCR’s nationalist corruption or Caesar’s authoritarianism demanded messy compromises.

“What if you kill House, you blow up the NCR on the strip, you assassinate Caesar? What the eff is going to happen?” Gonzales asked. The answer, apparently, was a Yes Man who “always thinks that’s the best option.”

Contrast this with Fallout 3 or Morrowind, where essential NPCs forced players to confront consequences.

New Vegas’ Yes Man became a narrative cop-out, letting players avoid the “getting your hands dirty” work of faction alignment. Yet Gonzales couldn’t entirely dismiss its popularity: “It seems like it worked for people, so that’s cool.”