Josh Sawyer

Pentiment players on Xbox have noticed that the game doesn't feature 120 frames per second (fps) like the PlayStation 5 version, but Obsidian Entertainment has confirmed it'll be added in a new patch.

Fallout 5 won't start development until after The Elder Scrolls 6 launches, so we're a long way off from the next numbered game in the series, but the Amazon show has ignited a newfound hype in the franchise. So, the question is whether a third party will develop a spin-off akin to Obsidian's New Vegas in the meantime.

This article has spoilers for the Fallout TV series

Following the success of the Fallout TV show, the director of Fallout New Vegas is encouraging fans to give its much-maligned card game another try. 

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty's quest director and the associate game director of the Cyberpunk sequel, Paweł Sasko, has been talking about the importance of sustainability in game development, and the benefits of not overworking teams to the point of crunch.

Baldur's Gate 3 had a very successful night at the BAFTA Game Awards, taking home not just the Best Game award, but also accolades for the best music, narrative, and even players' choice. Speaking about the players' choice win, the CRPG's publishing director, Michael Douse, says it's "a testimony to the fact that a developer is not a dispensable asset."

Larian is moving away from Dungeons & Dragons and Baldur's Gate for its next project, but CEO Swen Vincke says the studio had made a start on Baldur's Gate 3 DLC and was even thinking about a proper sequel before the final decision was made.

Obsidian Entertainment has addressed the «bug» in Pentiment which meant the game ran at 120fps on PlayStation 5 — but not its native Xbox Series X/S.

Josh Sawyer, a CRPG veteran and the director of Pillars of Eternity, Fallout: New Vegas and more has spoken out about how Pillars of Eternity got its name, along with how its inspiration – adra – came to be. 

In amongst the expected Star Troopers chatter, a less obvious comparison for Helldivers 2 has quietly been making the rounds: 2015's Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. Unexpected overlap in stealth, movement, and gunplay has brought Kojima's open-world action espionage masterwork back into the spotlight, and director Josh Sawyer of RPG powerhouse Obsidian reckons it's all just more evidence that more games shouldn't feel bad about copying stuff that works well and feels good. 

Josh Sawyer has cleared the air over a performance bug on Pentiment for Xbox consoles.

Former Xbox exclusive Pentiment currently runs smoother on PlayStation 5 than on Xbox Series X/S, fans have realised — prompting the game's director to blame the situation on a «bug».

Obsidian Entertainment’s Pentiment launched last week for PS5, PS4 and Nintendo Switch after being exclusive to Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC. The side-scrolling 2D role-playing game supports 120 frames per second on PS5, which was a bonus. However, in a strange twist, the Xbox Series X/S version now only runs at 60 FPS.

Pentiment launched on PS5 and Switch last week. Some quickly noticed the PS5 version runs better than the Xbox version. However, that will change soon, according to the game's creator.

Fallout: New Vegas' director has revealed that a classic Shirley Jackson story inspires one of the Mojave Wasteland's most devilish vaults. 

Microsoft has confirmed multiplatform release plans for four first-party titles.

Xbox Game Studios titles Pentiment and Grounded are coming to the Nintendo Switch.

During tonight's Future of Xbox event, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer announced that four Xbox games would be launching on new consoles, and while he wouldn't be drawn on which four Xbox exclusives will be making the jump to other platforms, we can take a pretty good guess based on what Spencer said.

Esoteric Ebb seemed like a game tailor-made for me, and that left me nervous. An irreverent, dialogue-focused RPG proudly announcing its Disco Elysium inspirations⁠—my mind jumped to all those soulslike games I've gotten my hopes up for that just don't quite have the FromSoft magic.

CD Projekt has deemed Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty a commercial success after revealing it hit similar numbers to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine.

Obsidian has surprised its fans by releasing an update for the near nine-year-old role-playing game Pillars of Eternity.

Baldur's Gate 3 is the big, world-changing isometric party-based RPG that everyone's still talking about, but I've always felt that Pillars of Eternity is the game that really first started turning that engine over. The OG Infinity Engine vibes were strong, but it stood well on its own merits too: We called it «a deep, rich, and wonderfully written RPG that lives up to the towering legacy of the games that inspired it» in our 92% review. 

Game developer veterans from RPG companies like Obsidian and Bioware say that the temporary death of the CRPG in the early 2000s was down to retailer meddling, as outlined in a series of tweets made just before the holidays.

Genre veterans have explained how retail companies (Best Buy, Walmart, GameStop, and more) contributed to the death of isometric role-playing games. 

Obsidian Entertainment's beloved isometric RPG Pillars of Eternity just received an unexpected update, nine whole years after its initial release, and I have a sneaking suspicion that two other big games are responsible.

The Outer Worlds 2 is seemingly going to solve a design problem that the creator of the Fallout series himself has been struggling to solve for nearly 30 years.

This year's Game Awards ceremony garnered a lot of justified criticism for the way it rushed winning developers off stage in favour of adverts, rambling conversations with Hideo Kojima, and celebrity cameos from the likes of Timothée Chalamet.

With few exceptions, the open-world game has largely been the preserve of Western studios – those with deep enough pockets to fund the development of large-scale sandboxes, rich in scope and detail alike. But with publisher NetEase evidently prepared to splash the cash, Hangzhou-based Everstone is plotting to put China at the very heart of the genre with the forthcoming Where Winds Meet. 

Industry and CRPG veteran Josh Sawyer has weighed in on Baldur's Gate 3's gameplay and mechanics, highlighting the challenges of adapting from D&D's fifth edition.

Developers behind Baldur’s Gate 3 hope the game’s success leads to more weirdness in the RPG space. 

Last night, Geoff Keighley revealed dozens of trailers for upcoming video games, and interviewed some of his favourite celebrites and best palss from the games industry on stage. He also happened to hand out some awards to game developers. At his awards show. Titled The Game Awards.

The Game Awards have been and gone, turning the PC Gamer homepage into something like the deranged Instagram feed of someone obsessed with Sam Lake and Swen Vincke, but it's left plenty to discuss—and criticise—in its wake. 

Phantom Liberty, the Cyberpunk 2077 DLC that adds Idris Elba and some kind of rocket ship (I think? I haven't actually gotten to it yet), has done quite well for itself. That's according to a recent CD Projekt Red earnings call as well as the company's Twitter account, which was out yesterday boasting about 4.3 million copies of the DLC sold since launch. 

Fallout New Vegas director Josh Sawyer has shared some helpful advice for those still struggling with the RPG's card-based minigame Caravan. 

Smaller games are good for even large video game studios, according to Obsidian design director Josh Sawyer. In a response to a post on social media platform X by Jeryce Dianingana of Cliffhanger Games, Sawyer states that, among other things, allowing studios to take time between larger projects to work on smaller games helps in a number of ways.

After the source code for one classic D&D RPG was confirmed to be lost, fans went about creating their own improved remaster with Icewind Dale 2: Enhanced Edition. In the wake of that release, lead designer Josh Sawyer has confirmed that he's not to blame for the missing code.

Following the multiple wins at the Golden Joysticks Awards, where Baldur's Gate 3 snatched seven prizes (Best Storytelling, Best Visual Design, Studio Of The Year, Best Game Community, Best Supporting Performer for Astarion's voice actor, PC Game Of The Year, and Ultimate Game Of The Year), Game Director Swen Vincke spoke to Gamesradar about the win. The CEO of Larian Studios expressed hope that the success of Baldur's Gate 3 could fuel more interest in the cRPG genre going forward.

Obsidian Entertainment is the developer behind some of gaming's most notable role-playing games, including Fallout: New Vegas, The Outer Worlds, and the critically-acclaimed Pentiment. However, there's one game in particular that Obsidian's key creative holds dear, and it was initially one of the developer's biggest bombs.Shared on X (formerly Twitter), veteran RPG developer Josh Sawyer shared a photo of a specially engraved watch with a note about the underrated Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, a game that the dev holds in high regard.

Before the release of Baldur's Gate 3, it was widely accepted that CRPGs were more of a niche genre that only attracted a rather dedicated audience. Games like Divinity: Original Sin 2 and the Pillars of Eternity series are some of the most loved and highly-rated RPGs of all time, but they were made with fairly minimal budgets due to their low expected sales. In fact, both Pillars of Eternity games were crowdfunded, meaning that developer Obsidian didn't have too much cash to work with.

Obsidian Entertainment design director Josh Sawyer has said that he'd be well up for making a new Pillars of Eternity RPG, given a budget on par with Baldur's Gate 3. Specifically, he'd like to build on Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire's combat system, and use a "scripted 3D camera" that avoids some of the fuss of exploring the world and navigating the interface of Larian's game.

Pentiment director Josh Sawyer has said he’d like to make a third entry in the Pillars of Eternity series if he could secure a budget similar to that of Baldur’s Gate 3.

Earlier this month, Obsidian's veteran game designer Josh Sawyer jokingly said he was waiting for Microsoft to give the green light on a $120 million budget to make Pillars of Eternity 3.

Game director Josh Sawyer has stated that he would like to work on a third game in the Pillars of Eternity series, but only if it had the budget comparable to Baldur’s Gate 3. Speaking in an interview with Touch Arcade, Sawyer stated that while isn’t too keen on a sequel to Pentiment, Pillars of Eternity would be an option, provided the game got a high budget.

Obsidian Entertainment released Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire in May 2018, and it hasn't given any news of another sequel to the Pillars series ever since. Now, studio design director Josh Sawyer said he would love to develop Pillars of Eternity 3 — under the condition the game receives the same budget as Baldur's Gate 3.

2022 may not have seen Microsoft releasing a great many prominent first party Xbox titles, though as those who’ve played Obsidian Entertainment’s Pentiment will tell you, there was still some pretty good stuff to come from the Xbox Game Studios banner last year. Offering a smaller, significantly more contained, and more experimental narrative-driven adventure experience, Pentiment is definitely one of Xbox’s biggest overlooked gems.

I recently got around to playing Pentiment, and while I won't spoil the experience for anyone I will say, «Man. Wow. Holy cow,» as I stare off pensively into the distance. After contemplating the nature of existing for a few days, my main takeaway was that Obsidian should just give Josh Sawyer a few million dollars every five years or so, and tell him to come back when he's done.

Given the choice of making Fallout New Vegas 2, Pillers of Eternity 3, or Pentiment 2, director and RPG legend Josh Sawyer would return to Eora – but only if he had the reported funding that Baldur's Gate 3 got. 

Fallout: New Vegas game director Josh Sawyer has finally put to bed a popular fan theory 13 years after the game was released. 

Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer has laid to rest a fan theory that's persisted since launch about two of the game's most notoriously challenging areas.

Pillars of Eternity's director has joked that he'd love to do a third game - all he needs is a $120 million commitment from Xbox.

Following the release and enormous success of Baldur's Gate 3, the first cRPG with a triple-A budget, fans of the genre are now also wondering about a similar treatment for games like Pillars of Eternity 3.

Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3 became a massive hit following its full launch in early August. With over 5 million downloads, the long-awaited sequel to BioWare's classic Dungeons & Dragons-inspired CRPG has achieved crossover success, putting the sub-genre into the spotlight for its open-ended approach to storytelling and player choice.

The humble Cleric might be the least-popular Baldur's Gate 3 class, but that hasn't stopped the game's resident Sharran from being a key part of the game's world record speedrun.

Gosh, but we're an ungodly lot. A few weeks ago, Larian put out some stats showing that the Cleric was Baldur's Gate 3's least played class, with the majority of players preferring to play more front-line heroes rather than the humble god-botherers we rely on for healing and buffs. But now we might know why. 

Baldur's Gate 3's least popular class is the Cleric, and one veteran CRPG developer says that this has nothing to do with how Clerics operate under fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons rules - players have been dodging the class for years.

We've just given Baldur's Gate 3 one of the highest review scores ever awarded in PC Gamer's 30 year history, putting it in the company of just a handful of other games, including Half-Life 2 and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. It's an extraordinary RPG and already an all-time favorite for many on the team (though I doubt any of us except Fraser, who wrote our Baldur's Gate 3 review, have finished it yet).

Back in 2014, I interviewed Obsidian Entertainment director Josh Sawyer about Pillars of Eternity – a then-upcoming revival of the isometric RPG sub-genre that had been greenlit as part of the first wave of Kickstarter projects. Sawyer recalled the chilly reception afforded PC RPGs in the mid-to-late 2000s.

Baldur's Gate 3 is an exceptional game: a grognardy CRPG with complex and barely-explained D&D rules and a massive mainstream success, even before its console releases. With Diablo 4's always-online grind providing the perfect contrast, it's come across to some as a victory over malignant modern videogame trends: Where other companies build cosmetics stores and battle passes, Larian has succeeded through good old fashioned respect for player freedom and quality craftwork, or so goes some popular posts and articles. A handful of game developers, meanwhile, have cautioned against oversimplifying the lesson, arguing that Baldur's Gate 3 is an anomaly that even big studios won't be able to replicate. Online arguing has ensued.

Lies of P project director Jiwon Choi has referred to Xbox Game Pass as a ‘momentous occasion’ for the game.

Developers and players are less than impressed with how easy it is to accidentally activate Diablo 4's Battle Pass, and are accusing Blizzard of purposely designing it that way.