Josh Sawyer is not afraid to return to Pillars of Eternity, but he wants the kind of budget that one of this year’s most prominent games received.

Sawyer last worked on Pentiment at Obsidian Entertainment, but what if he had unlimited time and money to make a game? Touch Arcade also explored this topic in an interview with Sawyer, who said that he’s not keen on making a sequel to Pentiment, but would be happy to return to Pillars of Eternity if there was enough budget behind it, as he considers it important…

“I don’t think I would make Pentiment 2. I really feel very happy with that game. It’s not that I wouldn’t ever want to go back to it, but I just made it, so I’d probably wait a little bit. I think if it was really an unlimited budget, I think I would try Pillars 3, because I know what the budget was for [Pillars of Eternity 2:] Deadfire, which wasn’t very much, and I’ve heard from several people what the budget was for Baldur’s Gate 3, and I’m not going to talk about numbers, but if I got that budget, sure, I’ll do Pillars 3.

I’m pretty happy with Pillars and Deadfire, but I think if it wasn’t crowdfunded I’d probably make it turn-based. I’m not saying not to have a real time with pause system, but I think 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 that, 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 great cinematics and all that stuff. That would be great,” said Sawyer.

The Pillars of Eternity games are excellent, but there wasn’t a lot of money behind them. So it’s no wonder that Sawyer used Larian’s game as an example. He prefers turn-based because he thinks it’s easier to get it right… and we can’t argue with him.

Source: PCGamer