Pentiment - Anniversary Interview

Toucharcade interviewed Josh Sawyer one year after the release of Pentiment:

Pentiment Anniversary Interview: Josh Sawyer on His Influences, Going From Playing D&D to Designing, a Potential Pillars of Eternity 3, RPG Mechanics, and More

I loved Obsidian Entertainment’s Pentiment last year, and with its upcoming anniversary, I figured it was a great time to chat with Josh Sawyer (Studio Design Director at Obsidian) about the game, RPG mechanics, his career, the games he is playing now, and a lot more including a few non-gaming topics. This is one of the longer interviews we’ve done. Usually, I’d want to split a feature like this into two parts, but I’m sure fans of Josh Sawyer’s work like reading a lot anyway. This interview was conducted on a video call. It was then transcribed and edited for brevity in the case of some portions.

TouchArcade (TA): For those who don’t know you, tell us a little bit about yourself, and your current position at Obsidian Entertainment.

Josh Sawyer (JS): My name is Josh Sawyer. I started in the video game industry in 1999 at Black Isle Studios. I originally started as a website designer. The first game I worked on was Planescape Torment, designing the website for that, and then Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate 2.

I then became a designer on Icewind Dale, and I worked at Black Isle until it closed or just before it closed. I then went to Midway for a couple of years that didn’t really work out. Then I went to Obsidian. In 2005, I worked on Neverwinter Nights 2, and then after that I directed Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, and Pentiment. I’ve been the studio design director at the studio for five years.

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TA: I’m glad you mentioned that, because I was gonna ask what you thought about Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m slowly playing through it. I know you are as well. I think you mentioned how Baldur’s Gate 3 ended the real time with pause versus turn based debate. I also wanted to know what you specifically would like to do in your own game if you didn’t have to worry about what the audience wanted.

JS: I’m still concerned about what the audience wants, but I prefer turn based as well. I just think it’s easier to design more intricate combats. I like games with a lot of stats, obviously. (he laughs). But the problem with real time with pause is that it’s honestly very difficult for people to to actually parse all of that information and one of the things I’ve heard a lot from people who’ve played Deadfire in turn based, is that there were things about the game like the affliction and inspiration system that they didn’t really understand very clearly until they played it in turn based. Other mechanics like penetration, they didn’t fully understand until they played it in turn based. So I’m not saying that all those systems are perfect, but I do think like I like doing more crunchy stuff with systems, and that is it’s just easier to make that stuff clear and work in a turn based setting.

So I would do something like that, I’ve said before the camera in BG3 which is essentially the Divinity Original Sin 2 camera. I don’t prefer that because I like designing for a specific perspective.

I think you could do that with a scripted camera in 3D. I think that would be super cool. You can do that and it can work and be a lot of fun and. I think that’s that’s the thing. For me, most of the problems I have with BG3 have to do with the interface. It has to do with the camera or the interface and how you manage abilities and click on things and some of that stuff is kind of a headache to me to be honest. I really, at least for Pillars and Deadfire, I tried to keep the interface, given that it’s a very complicated game, I tried to make it as simple to interact with as possible, and I think we did a pretty good job on it, so that would continue to be my focus.

Any time I’m gonna make a game where I know that there’s a lot of complexity in it, I want the complexity to be not in interacting with the interface, but in the mental part of it, not the physical part of it.

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Thanks Couchpotato!