Pentimentdirector and veteran developer Josh Sawyer argues in favor of role-playing games not ceding total control to the player when it comes to decisions and their own power in the world around them.
In arecent interviewwith The Examined Game with Steven Lake, Sawyer, who has worked at Obsidian Entertainment for years on projects likeFallout: New Vegasand the Pillars of Eternity series, says that RPGs are “at their best” and players feel “at the center” of their decisions when they can control a lot, but “can’t control everything” around them.
“I think I’ve done this in a lot of the games I’ve worked on to different levels of success or favorable or unfavorable reception by the audience,” Sawyer says. “InPillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, notably you can’t stop Eothas,” he says, referring to an in-game deity. “He’s just going to do what he’s going to do. And you’re kind of told that point blank, and we also try to telegraph that he’s way beyond the ability to physically do anything.”
The developer attributes the decision partially to going against the idea of “I’m the protagonist, I can literally do anything.” To him, with an RPG, so much of what Obsidian excels at is making the player sit and deal with their choices, which “often feel very imperfect.” This evokes a sense of agony in which someone is left with, for example, two things to do that are good and bad, and having to decide which is most important.
“So many problems are just human problems,” he says. “They’re part of the reality of life and being a human being and living on this planet with other people right now. And even in a fantastic world, there are still going to be powers that are beyond you. There are things that you can’t overwhelm.”
Another example, brought up by Sawyer, includes the player having to accuse someone of murder inPentiment, despite the fact that (spoilers ahead) it’s not possible to truly figure out who committed the crime. The player, then, understands that someone is going to die, and you have to pick that someone.
“(…) it requires the player to interrogate their own values and say, like, is it most important to me that I condemn the person I think did it? Is it most important to me that I condemn the person that I dislike? Is it most important to me that I condemn the person that I think the town will miss the least, or like, and it’s not easy.”
Sawyer has shared quite a bit of game development and design insight over the years. Earlier this year, he argued that experimenting during a game’s production is “extremely risky,” cautioning against treating it like the pre-production phase. RegardingPentiment, he talked about the importance of knowing when to “go big,” and the many ways developers can make text-reading dynamic and exciting in games.
As for Obsidian, Bethesda franchise director Todd Howard confirmed that the studio iscollaborating with Obsidianon a new Fallout game. The news came in the aftermath ofXbox’s latest round of mass layoffs, which affected 1600 employees starting on July 6, with 1600 to follow in the upcoming fiscal year. Obsidian was hit hard by the cuts, losing approximatelyone quarter of its staff. Bethesda itself was also hit with a number of cuts, which Howard called “really tough.”
