Obsidian Entertainment veteran Josh Sawyer was too burned out on game development to direct Avowed, the upcoming RPG set in the same universe as his two beloved Pillars of Eternity games.
You might have heard Josh Sawyer's name for his work directing Fallout: New Vegas, AKA the best game in the series, as well as the isometric Pillars of Eternities and medieval whodunnit Pentiment. But when the renowned studio began working on a first-person offshoot to the Pillars of Eternity series, Sawyer was apparently "pretty burned out."
"The project was conceived by Feargus Urquhart, my boss [and the studio's CEO]," Sawyer explains in a new Q&A YouTube video. "This was right after [Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire] - I can't remember exactly when the conception of it occurred, let's say maybe a year - but after Deadfire I was pretty burned out, like legitimately capital B burned out. And it wasn't that I was burned out on Pillars specifically, but I just couldn't direct anything. I wasn't interested in it."
Sawyer then explains that it wasn't until he began developing his passion project in Pentiment that he "really got back into the idea of directing... for a while I was just offering advice and things like that." Sawyer's experiences on Pentiment actually informed a wider belief in the studio that smaller games can benefit AAA teams and keep them healthy - also evidenced by the long-running success of Grounded.
Aside from feeling too worn out to take on another hefty project, Sawyer also just didn't feel personally responsible for the fantasy world he helped create. "I know this will sound crazy to some people, but I don't care. It's not mine. It was never mine," he says. "My mentality with whatever I do - I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm saying it is a fact - is I don't have control over the intellectual property that I develop while working for another company. That's just the way it is.
"I have long held in my mind that it's not my choice what happens with something or does not happen with it," he continued. "I'm certainly willing to give my opinion on where an IP goes or how an IP is used, but I don't feel like an overprotective parent because it doesn't belong to me anymore - it never really did."
Elsewhere, Sawyer said that even Baldur's Gate 3's reception might not be enough for him to return to the universe for a Pillars of Eternity 3 because he's "out of step" with the audience that enjoyed Larian Studios' hit game.
