RPG veteran and Obsidian Entertainment studio design director Josh Sawyer has opened up about the possibility of making a sequel to Pillars of Eternity and whether he would like to be involved in the project.
Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (left), Josh Sawyer (right)
Sawyer touched on this topic during a Q&A session on his YouTube channel (and thanks to @ufsbkatudou for the timestamps). One of the questions was about whether Obsidian discussed making Pillars of Eternity 3 after the success of Baldur’s Gate 3.
The developer noted that people at the studio talked about it because BG3 was huge critical and commercial hit. However, Sawyer wouldn’t necessarily want to be a part of the next Pillars of Eternity even if the project were to get the green light and go into production.
According to Sawyer, the question should be asked this way: how would one recreate the success of BG3 without using the Dungeon & Dragons system and setting?
First of all, you should consider the amount of money spent on Larian’s latest RPG and realize that you will need a big budget to make a project on the same level of quality and presentation. “Money doesn’t fix all your problems, but there are certain things you simply cannot do without money,” Sawyer noted. “For example, the production quality of the character models, the cinematics especially, all the animation… that’s crazy. That’s a lot of time and money.”
So even if a parent company approves such an “expensive proposition,” as Sawyer puts it, you still need to understand what you can bring to the table as a designer or game director. And that’s where things get complicated.
Looking at Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire and Baldur’s Gate 3 and how each game was received, Sawyer says, “I feel like I don’t have the pulse of that audience.” Even if he did 20 years ago, he doesn’t think he gets what CRPG players want now.
“Things that they like and don’t like mechanically, story-wise, things like that. Or I do get it and I don’t dig it,” he explained, adding that “I feel like I’m kind of out of touch with that audience.”
Sawyer noted that if someone wants to give him a “pile of money” to make a game like this, he’ll do it. However, he thinks there’s a chance that it won’t appeal to the same audience as Baldur’s Gate 3 and won’t necessarily recoup its investment. “I’ll always give my opinion [about a project], but that’s different from directing,” Sawyer concluded.
Josh Sawyer was the director on the two Pillars of Eternity games. The first title came out March 2015, receiving positive reviews from critics and selling over 700k copies (as of February 2016). Deadfire launched three years after and, despite positive reviews, had “relatively low sales,” with Sawyer saying that “if we consider making another Pillars game in this style, we’re going to have to re-examine the entire format of the game.”
We don’t have official budgets for the Pillars of Eternity series, but it definetely cost a lot less than Baldur’s Gate 3. Obsidian used crowdfunding to raise money for both projects, receiving nearly $4 million for PoE 1 and over $4.4 million for Deadfire.
For more details, as well as Josh Sawyer’s takes on the top 5 criteria for good game designers, the historical background of Pentiment, and the Fallout IP, watch the full video below.