Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of gaming’s biggest success stories, a lengthy story-focused RPG that set the world on fire. Of course, it also literally proved how much players love romance in video games. The game has raised a lot of questions about a potential computer-RPG renaissance, but Pillars of Eternity might not be a part of that, according to its director Josh Sawyer. In a new Q&A video on YouTube, Sawyer expressed some doubt at a Pillars of Eternity 3 happening, not because it isn’t possible, but because he himself doesn’t feel like he knows what players want — and that includes romance.
Sawyer is one of the most pivotal developers in Western RPGs, with writing and design credits on Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Tyranny, Pentiment, and more. He was also the director of both Pillars of Eternity and its sequel Deadfire, classic CRPGs that gained quite a bit of notoriety years before the release of Baldurs’ Gate 3. In fact, Pillars and Baldur’s Gate have quite a few similarities, both being set in massive fantasy worlds, dense with lore, and a robust set of complex companions that all have their own narrative arcs.
That’s what’s particularly interesting about Sawyers’ new comments, as he says, “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. Whether I did 20 years ago, whether I do now, I don’t think I’ve got it now. Things that they like or don’t like mechanically, story-wise, things like that. Or I do get it, and I don’t dig it.”
Addressing a follow-up question, Sawyer points to romances as a specific aspect of RPGs that often doesn’t work for him, in so far as they’re implemented.
“The fantasy audience and what they enjoy in a romance is not generally what I enjoy in romances,” Sawyer says, “If I were to make romances in a game that were done in a way that I find appealing, would an audience enjoy that or would they actually hate it more than romance not being in the game?”
Obsidian’s history with romance in its games is what makes that last comment particularly illuminating. Most of the studio’s games haven’t featured romance for the player, or if they have in very small ways. New Vegas had characters the player could sleep with but no fully-formed romances and the same can be largely said for Pillars of Eternity 2 and Pentiment. However, all of these deliberately don’t feel like “romance options,” as they’re intentionally kept casual flings to match the tones of the stories and characters.
It’s fascinating to hear someone who’s developed some of the most beloved RPGs out there say he’s “out of touch” with the RPG crowd, but his stance on romances is honestly easy to understand. Even games as good as Baldur’s Gate 3 often boil down romance to a kind of checklist, another feature to be “gamified,” rather than an actual meaningful relationship between two characters. For evidence of that, just look at the speedruns that have popped up with Baldur’s Gate 3, on sleeping with characters as fast as possible.
The twist here is that an Obsidian game happens to feature one of my personal favorite “romance” sequences in any game, it’s just not about the player. In The Outer Worlds, you have a companion named Parvati, a sweet but kind of neurotic engineer, who also happens to be asexual. That last fact is meaningfully explored through conversation and her side quest, where you have to help Parvati set up a date with a woman named Junlei.
As you leap through comical hoops to set up the date, you have to help Parvati deal with her anxiety about if Junlei likes her, and if she’ll screw up the whole romance thing because of her being asexual and not “getting” it. In the end, it’s an incredibly sweet moment that shows you truly bonding with a companion and displays genuine attraction between two people beyond just the physical. It’s a masterfully done romantic moment that still involves the player but doesn’t revolve around characters being attracted to the player.
As much as I love instances like The Outer Worlds, it’s hard to deny romances done in the style of Baldur’s Gate 3 do appeal to a wide crowd. A term that’s been used a lot recently is “playersexual,” the idea that characters or party members will always be attracted to the player regardless of their gender or physical features.
While there’s certainly a place for those kinds of romances, at least in my mind, it’s heartening to see a developer like Sawyer want to veer away from that. Video games have made such massive strides in storytelling and character writing over the last decade, but romance and relationships, in particular, feel like the next major piece of game design that needs to be given a real overhaul.
Of course, it’s important to note that romance isn’t the sole factor in the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, and there are other roadblocks standing in the way of another Pillars of Eternity game. Sawyer touches on that briefly too, as he’s simply not sure another Pillars game could recapture the moment that Baldur’s Gate had, and a big part of that is budget.
“Money doesn’t fix all your problems, but there are some things you simply cannot do without money,” Sawyer says, “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.”
More than anything, it’ll be interesting to see if other RPG developers can capitalize on Baldur’s Gate 3’s success, or if it’ll go down as a once-in-a-lifetime event.
