Leonard Boyarsky

“We have no idea what we're doing, that's why they become cult classics instead of successful games.”— 131 Rapid-Fire Questions About The Outer Worlds

Leonard Boyarsky is one of the original masterminds behind the Fallout world and the first Fallout game.

After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Art Center College of Design, Boyarsky began work as a freelance artist in 1992. Some time later he was hired as a cleanup artist at Interplay, later becoming the lead artist on Stonekeep. This eventually lead to his becoming the lead artist/art director on the GURPS project that later became Fallout. Aside from guiding the art on the project, together with Jason Anderson, Tim Cain, Scott Campbell and Chris Taylor, he oversaw the direction and feel of the game. He left Interplay after helping to complete the initial design for Fallout 2 and, together with Cain and Anderson, was a founder of Troika Games.

After Troika's demise, Leon Boyarsky went to work at Blizzard Entertainment on Diablo III as a Lead World Designer until April 2016 when he left to join Obsidian Entertainment.

Quotes[]

“I did approach Bethesda about us working with them on Fallout, but they were uninterested. Instead of flaming them for this however, think about it from their point of view: who among us would want to pay a huge amount of money for a license and then turn it over to someone else? I'm assuming they paid the cash because they wanted to make a Fallout game, end of story.”

Employment history[]

From	To	Company	Role
1992	1998	Interplay Entertainment	Art Director, Lead Artist
1998	2005	Troika Games	CEO, Lead Creative Designer
2005	2016	Blizzard Entertainment	Senior World Designer
2016	Present	Obsidian Entertainment	Co-Game Director, Creative Director

Credits[]

Fallout series[]

Year	Title	Credited as/for
1997	Fallout	Lead Artist Art Director Original Game Design Additional Design
1998	Fallout 2	Original Game Design

Other work[]

Year	Title	Credited as/for
1992	Castles II: Siege and Conquest	Artwork
1993	Unnatural Selection	Additional Art
1995	Stonekeep	2D Graphic Artist 3D Rendering Artist Video Processor
2001	Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura	Designers
2004	Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines	Troika Games Project Lead Artwork Design, Dialog and Story Additional Support
2012	Diablo III^[1]	World Design & Writing
2019	The Outer Worlds	Director Writer

Behind the scenes[]

Leonard was the person responsible for Fallout's famous ending involving the Vault Dweller's exile into the desert.
He came up with the alternate flag of the United States with 14 stars and the initial idea for 13 super-states, the idea was further developed only by Joshua Sawyer during the development of Van Buren.
A character mentioned in Fallout 2 is named after him. He is mentioned by Lynette and his grave can be found in Golgotha.
The Vault City designer notes include credit to Boyarsky for the design of Vault City.^[2]