Josh Sawyer Reveals Obsidian’s Interest in Creating Pillars Tactics Game

Josh Sawyer Discusses Future Projects During LA Wild Fire Relief Stream

In a recent live stream to support wildfire relief efforts in Los Angeles, Josh Sawyer, the visionary behind Pillars of Eternity, captivated audiences while playing the newly launched Avowed on Obsidian’s Twitch channel. The stream offered an engaging mix of gameplay and insightful discussion about current trends and future possibilities within the gaming landscape.

Interest in ‘Pillars Tactics’

One of the most intriguing topics that emerged during the stream was the interest among Obsidian staff in developing a game titled ‘Pillars Tactics.’ Sawyer noted that while there is significant enthusiasm for tactical games within the team, there remains some hesitation regarding the game’s commercial viability.

“Pillars Tactics is a thing that a lot of people at the studio would like to work on, and there are a lot of people who like tactics games. Figuring out a scope for it is tricky. A scope of development where it feels like it could actually make money, because tactics games have a very enthusiastic fan base, but the fan base is not humongous. It’s sort of like that floor is high – like, if you make a decent tactics game, those people are going to buy it. But if all of them buy it, that’s still not that many people.”

Potential for a Turn-Based ‘Pillars of Eternity 3’

Reflecting on the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 from over a year ago, Sawyer expressed his desire to create a more tactical, turn-based iteration of Pillars of Eternity 3, provided that sufficient funding from Microsoft was available. He believes that a high-production-value, party-based fantasy RPG would be an exciting venture.

“I think that would be a lot of fun to do, to do like a high production value party based fantasy RPG. I’m pretty happy with Pillars and Deadfire, but I do think that if it were not crowdfunded, I would probably make it turn based. I’m not saying to not have a real time with pause system, but I do think that the Deadfire turn based system which I can’t take credit for, that Nick Carver and Brian MacIntosh did, was really cool. But, the game wasn’t designed for it, so actually designing the game for turn based, fewer encounters, smaller encounters, but much more tactical, I think that would be a lot of fun, and having awesome cinematics and all that stuff.”

Obsidian’s Current Focus on Action RPGs

Despite these ambitions for a tactical game, it appears that Obsidian will likely continue developing first-person action RPGs, similar to Avowed, along with the anticipated release of The Outer Worlds 2, which is also projected to debut within this year.

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