Josh is against having mechanics in his games that encourage reloading, performing the same actions, and getting a different result solely because of the RNG. He's not against the idea of reloading.
I understand that to you these may be different things, but what you said is easily translated as "I don't want players reloading because of mechanics", hence "against reloading".
Of course, I'm not trying to imply that Sawyer is against people reloading a game after dying. But people reload all the time, for different things. The Magazines in New Vegas are a perfect example of reloading fodder: you can't know for certain when to use magazines in dialogue checks, so people will likely reload after failing a check and realizing they could have read a magazine beforehand, which ruins the experience. Not to mention I believe magazines have no place in a series like Fallout, because that's what they essentially are. And they don't make any sense either: do I read the magazine and then it goes *poof*? It's a continuation of Bethesda's practice of giving the player tons of stat boosting items and apparel.
Lockpicking and hacking minigames also encourage reloading, if you are a moron who can't get them right, of course.
This runs contrary to his goals in New Vegas, and certainly doesn't describe any Fallout game or Wasteland 2.
And what were those? All I saw was a better RPG, but still a fundamentally boring videogame outside of conversations.
Regarding the second part, it's easy to notice why: Fallout is a fairly easy game, and Wasteland 2 has you command an entire group of Rangers. If you could only use one player (verifiable) the game would be extremely hard. Even more so considering the game is tailored around a group of Rangers with vastly different skill sets that make it much harder.
Sneaking is quite useful in New Vegas on account of sneak attack crits and getting past things if you just don't want to fight them (e.g. taking the shortcuts to New Vegas at the beginning, where no, you will not survive those encounters against deathclaws and cazadores. You're not exactly swimming in stealth boys at the beginning either, though you can get at least two to help out with that)
I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but: sneaking is not even useful in the same manner as it is in Thief when I play with a bunch of difficulty mods on top of New Vegas. It certainly isn't "useful" at all when every encounter in the vanilla game is easy as hell. Again, this is because the main goal of sneaking in a game should be disposing of enemies that would overwhelm you, and be able to pass by enemies without drawing unwanted attention that would kill you. In New Vegas and in pretty much every Bethesda game, sneaking is literally a "stealthy archer" gameplay gimmick, the most interesting way to play the game (except it's only cool in Skyrim). Never did I feel Sneaking was actually useful, except in the one mission of the game where
I must remain undetected (stealing the Gun Runner's specifications).
TL;DR
How sneaking works in New Vegas:
- Kill enemies silently because it is more fun.
- If you don't sneak, nothing bad really happens.
- Sneaking is useful if you want to avoid boring fights and have a fun time.
How it should work in New Vegas and every other game ever made:
- Killing multiple enemies silently is a necessity to avoid death.
- If you don't sneak, you better be prepared for a difficult fight, as it should be expected from a one vs five men situation.
- Sneaking is useful if you want to survive, just like in Thief.
