Fallout: New Vegas may have been released 14 years ago, but much of what’s contained in its tattered vision of America seems eternally impressive. The New Vegas Strip, home to just a few bright lights and lonely casinos, is not necessarily one of those things. But when director Josh Sawyer saw an early version of the Strip, he worried it was too impressive to exist.

While working on New Vegas, Sawyer explains to Edge Magazine in issue #404 that his team at Obsidian was overwhelmed. In 2007, the Fallout franchise officially left Interplay for Bethesda. Sawyer says the latter developer has been “very helpful” in relaying information about the RPG games he’s recently become an expert on, but “there’s still a lot that’s considered institutional knowledge that the team behind them use would never think of I’ll tell you.”