Pentiment Director Would Like to Make Pillars of Eternity 3 if He Got a Budget the Size of Baldur’s Gate 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.

“I don’t think I would make Pentiment 2,” Sawyer said. “I really do feel very satisfied with that game. It’s not like I don’t wanna return to it ever, but I just did it, so I’d probably wait a little bit.”

“I think if it truly was an unlimited budget, I think I would try Pillars 3 because I know what the budget was for Deadfire, which was not a whole lot and I have heard from multiple people what the budget was for Baldur’s Gate 3, and I’m not gonna talk about numbers, but if I got that budget, sure, I’ll make Pillars 3.”

Sawyer goes on to talk about some of the game design decisions made during the development of Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire. Owing to both titles going the crowdfunding route to get their development funded, studio Obsidian opted to develop the games with a real-time with pause (RTwP) combat system. Sawyer states that if the titles weren’t crowdfunded, the studio would have likely gone the route of featuring turn-based combat in the two games.

“I’m pretty happy with Pillars and Deadfire, but I do think that if it were not crowdfunded, I would probably make it turn based,” said Sawyer. “I’m not saying to not have a real time with pause system, but I do think that the Deadfire turn based system which I can’t take credit for, that was Nick Carver and Brian MacIntosh, was really cool. But, the game wasn’t designed for it, so actually designing the game for turn based, fewer encounters, smaller encounters, but much more tactical, I think that would be a lot of fun, and having awesome cinematics and all that stuff. That would be great.”

In the same interview, Sawyer also spoke about bringing Pentiment to more platforms. The director stated that a release on the Nintendo Switch, and even on iPad, is a possibility. According to Sawyer, this comes down to players playing the title on the Steam Deck and wondering if it would make sense for it to also come to the Nintendo Switch.

Pentiment is available on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.