Josh Sawyer doesn't like Baldur Gate 3-style romances and that's part of why he doubts a new Pillars of Eternity would be a hit: 'I feel like I'm kind of out of touch with that audience'

Josh Sawyer is an RPG legend, with writing and design credits on games including Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, The Outer Worlds, and numerous others. But with the runaway success of Baldur's Gate 3 inspiring talk about the possibility of Pillars of Eternity 3, Sawyer expressed some doubt about his participation in it—not because he doesn't want to do it, but because he doesn't feel like he's hip to what modern RPG fans want.

One major obstacle to recreating BG3's success in a new Pillars of Eternity game, Sawyer said in a new Q&A video, is money: «Money doesn't fix all your problems, but there are some things you simply cannot do without money. For example, the production quality of the character models, the cinematics especially, all the animation, that's crazy. That's a lot of time and money. It's an expensive proposition.»

That echoes what Sawyer said in 2023: That he'd be happy to take a run at Pillars of Eternity 3 if someone were willing to give him a BG3-sized budget to do it. But even with that budget, he isn't confident a new Pillars game would achieve the lofty heights of Baldur's Gate 3 because that's just not what he's into.

«Looking at Deadfire and how it was received and looking at BG3 and how it was received, I feel like I don't have the pulse of that audience, even if I ever did,» Sawyer said. «Whether I did 20 years ago, or whether I do now, I don't think I've got it now. Things that [players] like and don't like, mechanically, story-wise, things like that. Or I do get it, and it's not—I don't dig it.

»So I feel like I'm kind of out of touch with that audience in a way that—if you want to give me a pile of money to make a game, I'll make it. I don't necessarily think it's going to appeal to the audience, the same audience [as Baldur's Gate 3], and make that money back."

In response to a follow-up question, Sawyer pointed to romances as one particular aspect of the RPG genre that doesn't really