Get all your news in one place.

100's of premium titles.
One app.

Start reading

Get all your news in one place.

100's of premium titles. One news app.

Start reading

The Latest Breaking News from Josh Sawyer

RPG veteran Josh Sawyer says sometimes game designers "go overboard in removing friction"

But that's not what happened with Neverwinter Nights 2

GamesRadar

When it comes to RPG design, Fallout: New Vegas lead Josh Sawyer says Ghost of Tsushima and Yotei have "some of the best armor I've ever seen"

"Looks really cool"

GamesRadar

I never change weapons in RPGs, which means I've made Obsidian director Josh Sawyer's life a living hell when it comes to making cool armour systems

Sorry, Josh.

PC Gamer

From analysis to the latest developments in health,
read the most diverse news in one place.

After 26 years of RPGs, Obsidian legend Josh Sawyer admits he's still trying to make a good armor system

Avowed's "kind of worked, except that nobody liked it"

GamesRadar

Fallout: New Vegas director says it's "fine" Crimson Desert's story is so bad that developer Pearl Abyss has to patch it, "even if it isn't ideal"

At least they're trying

GamesRadar

"Other ideas ... had to just fall by the wayside": Fallout: New Vegas director says Obsidian had to limit the RPG's scope due to a time crunch

Fallout: New Vegas dev Obsidian originally had "other ideas" for the RPG, but they "had to just fall by the wayside" due to time constraints.

Windows Central

Fallout: New Vegas director's hopes for the RPG were shaped by how little time Obsidian had to work on it: "We can't set our sights on anything crazier than this"

Obsidian's Josh Sawyer says there were "other ideas" that "had to just fall by the wayside"

GamesRadar

Read news from The Economist, FT, and more,
with one subscription

A minor Fallout: New Vegas quest got its own ending slide because the team was transfixed by the choice where you make the NCR's worst soldiers take Psycho

Who you callin' Poindexter?

PC Gamer

"You are wrong" and Fallout New Vegas was ripped apart at launch, Obsidian's Josh Sawyer reminds RPG fans, comparing it to Cyberpunk 2077: "Its reputation at launch was not fantastic"

"There was another game that sold very well at launch that did not review amazingly"

GamesRadar

"When Bethesda bought the Fallout license," RPG legend Josh Sawyer figured his "dream" of making a Fallout game was dead – until New Vegas came along

"I figured I would never have a chance to work on the series again"

GamesRadar

'It took about 5 years' for people to start liking Fallout: New Vegas, says Josh Sawyer, and even longer for Obsidian to see that 'players actually liked the design choices we had made'

Hindsight has about a 20% chance of scoring a headshot in VATS.

PC Gamer

"It took about 5 years" for Fallout: New Vegas to win over fans, former lead says, and "a few years more" for the devs to believe they "actually liked the design choices we had made"

The cult RPG "was not particularly well-received when it launched"

GamesRadar

Benevolent Fallout New Vegas director says he would let players set “difficulty options however they like” if “it cost nothing⁠, which it does not”

"When it comes to exposing data tables and letting players mod that stuff, just let 'em do whatever the heck they want"

GamesRadar

Instead of difficulty, Obsidian designer Josh Sawyer thinks in terms of 3 RPG player archetypes: 'What are they trying to get out of this game?'

I'm usually looking for a bow that shoots chain lightning or something.

PC Gamer

Get all your
news in one place.

100's of premium titles.
One news app.

PC Gamer

A Baldur's Gate 3-style early access period wouldn't have done much for Deadfire, the secret best CRPG of the last decade, per its director Josh Sawyer

It must be true, I wrote it in the headline.

GamesRadar

Baldur's Gate 3's early access approach wouldn't have helped Pillars of Eternity 2's "big miss" at launch, says RPG vet Josh Sawyer – and even Larian faced Act 3 woes

"There were a lot of things to tune and that just didn't get the attention" in Obsidian's RPG

PC Gamer

Fallout: New Vegas lead writer 'loved writing' Yes Man, but thinks his questline may have been a mistake: 'It lets you get through the game without getting your hands dirty'

The sycophantic, (mostly) immortal robot made certain design constraints easier to work around, but it allows for a "rebellious, individualistic" player to bypass some tough choices.

PC Gamer

Obsidian's Josh Sawyer leads the charge of RPG fans playfully roasting Stranger Things for its D&D rule flubs: 'The oldheads are going to catch all these things'

Clerics casting Dimension Door? Not at any table in 1987.

Get all your
news in one place.

100's of premium titles.
One news app.

PC Gamer

Fallout: New Vegas lead writer worries Caesar's argument for authoritarianism 'was done a little too well,' but still believes 'you can't just make your tyrants cardboard villains'

Fascism's foothold in the wasteland mirrors the way it spreads in the real world.

GamesRadar

As Larian disgusts and excites with Divinity trailer, Obsidian's Josh Sawyer says "it is wild what people will get upset about in games" and then cheer "Wicker Man x Event Horizon"

The Divinity reveal is far more graphic than Baldur's Gate 3's gruesome trailers

Windows Central

Xbox studio Obsidian Entertainment doesn't use generative AI for its games like The Outer Worlds 2 — "We haven't been using it at all."

While many game publishers are leaning more and more on generative AI, Xbox studio Obsidian Entertainment is not using it at all.

GamesRadar

Fallout: New Vegas director and RPG maestro Josh Sawyer says it doesn't matter how good a game's writing is if the pacing is bad: "Players are going to get tired of it"

Obsidian writers have more sway than most studios, though

PC Gamer

Pillars of Eternity's 10-year anniversary turn-based mode will sidestep the biggest issues I was worried it would have, and you can try it this week

Pillars 1's turn-based mode enters public beta testing on November 5

PC Gamer

RPG vet Josh Sawyer keeps things like Fallout and D&D grounded in history because 'Once things get too magical… it's impossible to bring it back down to Earth'

Which is also why Deadfire is the best CRPG of at least the last decade, just saying.

GamesRadar

RPG legend Josh Sawyer says the reason classics like Baldur's Gate disappeared in the '00s was "because retailers told us no one wanted to buy them"

"We asked if we could see the research and they basically told us to trust them"

1 2 3 4 5

People

From analysis to the latest developments in health,
read the most diverse news in one place.

Organisations

Obsidian Entertainment

Read news from The Economist, FT, and more,
with one subscription

Topics

Places

Fourteen days free

Download the app

One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.