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At PC Gamer's roundtable, Obsidian's design director Josh Sawyer confessed that Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 were his "most compromised" games.
Sawyer has worked on Fallout: New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights 2, Pentiment, Alpha Protocol, and before them – Icewind Dale, a Dungeons & Dragons adaptation made in Infinity Engine. When he returned to the similar style of Pillars of Eternity, Sawyer was full of new ideas, but the game's Kickstarter backers wanted D&D, so he had to do what was expected of him and not what he wanted.
"Honestly, I have to say it felt like the most compromised games I worked on were Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2," he said. "Because when I came back to that format, I was like, 'Oh, I worked on these two [Icewind Dale] games, and then I worked on Neverwinter Nights 2, and now I have a bunch of new ideas for how differently I would do it if I were doing it on my own.' But they were crowdfunded games and the audience was like, 'No, we want D&D, we want exactly the same experience as the Infinity Engine games.'"
Sawyer added that he felt "a sense of obligation" but at the same time believed he was making the game worse "to appeal to the sensibilities of the audience that wanted something ultra nostalgic." Despite that, he is proud of what Pillars of Eternity turned out to be, although it was a "very weird experience".
At the same roundtable Cyberpunk 2077's quest director Paweł Sasko, Dragon Age's creative director Mike Laidlaw, and Strix Beltran, the narrative director from Hidden Path Entertainment discussed the AAA games crisis and its expenses.
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