Josh Sawyer is reportedly directing the already announced Fallout game from Obsidian. And while we don’t know much about what the New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity director is going to do with the upcoming Obsidian-created Fallout game, it’s very likely that you’re going to have to make some hard choices and you won’t be able to solve every problem with a punch or a lie.
In a new interview with The Examined Game, Sawyer talked about how role-playing games are “at their best” and players feel “at the center” of all their decisions when they “can control a lot,” but importantly, “can’t control everything.”
“I think I’ve done this in a lot of the games I’ve worked on to different levels of success or favorable or unfavorable reception by the audience,” admitted Sawyer in the interview.
“In Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, notably you can’t stop Eothas,” he said. “Like he’s just going to do what he’s going to do. And you’re kind of told that point blank, and we also try to telegraph that he’s way beyond the ability to physically do anything.”
However, that didn’t stop some players from thinking they could still stop and defeat the powerful god-like being. Sawyer says many RPGs have “conditioned” players to assume they can take out any big bad guy or solve every problem. So when players realize they can’t do that in Deadfire and can only help make the damage caused by Eothas less severe, some appreciated the limits on their ability to impact the situation, while others likely found it strange that simply defeating this enemy was beyond them.
“Part of that idea was again going against this idea of ‘I’m the protagonist, I can literally do anything,” said Sawyer. “And I was like, well, with a role-playing game, so much of what we excel at is making the player sort of sit and deal with their choices, which often feel very imperfect. That sense of agony where you’re like, I have two things to do that are good and bad, and I’ve got to decide which is most important.”
“So many problems are just human problems. They’re part of the reality of life and being a human being and living on this planet with other people right now. And even in a fantastic world, there are still going to be powers that are beyond you. There are things that you can’t overwhelm.”
Sawyer pointed to a moment in Obsidian’s Pentiment and how players have to accuse someone of murder. But the player can never really, truly figure out who committed the crime.
“So you understand that this person is going to die and you have to pick someone,” explained Sawyer. “And so you kind of have to do your best. And again, it requires the player to interrogate their own values and say, like, is it most important to me that I condemn the person I think did it? Is it most important to me that I condemn the person that I dislike? Is it most important to me that I condemn the person that I think the town will miss the least, or like, and it’s not easy.”
Once players have made that tough choice, one which involved forces outside of their control, Pentiment forces you to watch the execution, which can often be messy and horrible.
“And so a lot of players are just like…’I wish I hadn’t done this.’ And they’re just like, ‘I don’t know if there was a better decision to make here but, like, I didn’t think it was going to happen like this.’ And it’s like, well, this is how it happened,” said Sawyer with a smile.
Again, we have no idea what Sawyer’s reported Fallout game will look like, when it will arrive, or what it will be about. Still, I think his thoughts here about RPGs and the choices within them are great.
So many RPGs, Bethesda’s included, let you unlock everything, complete every mission, and solve every problem or stop every bad guy. It can be fun, sure, but it also robs these RPGs of tension, and it often leads to games that feel devoid of memorable or meaningful moments. That’s not the case in games like Pillars of Eternity or New Vegas or other Obsidian games. In these RPGs, choices can often linger with players for years and years, spawning online debate over which choice was right and which was wrong. And if Obsidian’s Fallout game has a lot of these kinds of moments in it, I’ll be there day one.
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