Obsidian, as a studio, is both currently and understandably quite busy on Avowed—an RPG it’s been very keen to remind you isn’t Skyrim. It also made the Pillars of Eternity games (the world of which Avowed is set in), and while the second entry of the CRPG enjoyed critical success, it didn’t sell as well as one might hope.
Josh Sawyer, studio design director at Obsidian, has gone on-record as wanting a Baldur’s Gate 3-style budget if he was to ever make a third one—but what about a tactics game, as a treat?
See, in the general lore of videogame RPGs, tactics spin-offs have filled a fascinating little niche. While an RPG focuses on spinning a yarn, with combat filling but one of a few pillars of the experience—tactics games get down to the nitty-gritty of hitting folks with swords on a grid. It’s sort of like the distinction between a TTRPG like D&D and a Wargame like Warhammer: 40k. That’s not to say a tactics game can’t have a story, the most recent one I played was stellar in that regard, it’s just less of a focus.
As such, there’s a substantial amount of cross-pollination. Games like Fallout and Final Fantasy have had tactics spin-offs, as have TTRPGs like D&D and, naturally, wargames have enjoyed plenty. It’s not hard to see why—if you’ve a solid RPG system, then you’ve got plenty of raw materials already present sorted for a tactics game.
According to Sawyer, that’s an idea Obsidian’s certainly entertained, as per a recent interview with Limit Break Network: “I know there have been a number of people, actually, at the studio who have floated the idea of a Pillars: Tactics game.”
Despite the immediate, mighty hunger I feel upon receiving that information, Sawyer immediately tempers any expectations that might arise as a result: “Tactics games are very interesting to me, and they occupy a very interesting space in the marketplace, because the audience for them is not huge, typically, but very passionate … they’ll play a lot of them, even if they’re not that good.”
Alas, given the series’ recent history with sales struggles, it’s not surprising Sawyer has to keep in mind the marketability of such a thing—and a small, die-hard fan base does not, unfortunately, make for a commercial success: “But, the cap on it is sort of like, not huge. There are breakout hits of course—Fire Emblem is one of the ones that people often think of. But it’s something that a number of people have talked about and thought about, it’s a hard one to make a case for.
“Every once in a while we’ll bring it up, and be like ‘we could maybe, I dunno…?’ I will say that, not just for myself, but there’s a lot of people at the studio who’ve pitched their own versions of a Pillars: Tactics game, so who knows. Maybe someday.”
As interviewer Tom Caswell rightly mentions, it also wouldn’t be out of character for the studio. Avowed is, in essence, a spin-off—and Obsidian isn’t allergic to smaller-scale projects like Pentiment. So taking the core, crunchy CRPG elements that are already there and pulling them into a humbler package isn’t entirely out of the question. Still, it’ll remain but a twinkle in Obsidian’s eye for a while if it ever happens at all, given Avowed (which isn’t shaping up to be half-bad) is on the horizon.
