Avowed Could Be Followed Up By Pillars Of Eternity Tactics At Obsidian

A consequence of the release of Avowed is that the excellent Pillars of Eternity series is back in the limelight. The beloved CRPG series that established the universe of Eora, the setting of Avowed, is easily one of the greatest creations of the CRPG subgenre. With Avowed’s relative commercial success and decent critical reception, there may be an appetite at developer Obsidian Entertainment and publisher Xbox to continue releasing games set in Eora.

Josh Sawyer, director of Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, has once again reiterated the studio’s desire to create a Pillars of Eternity tactics game (nice spot, PC Gamer). During a recent charity stream of Avowed, which Sawyer did not work on in an official capacity, the legendary game director touched on the subject of Pillars: Tactics.

Eora Renaissance

“Pillars: Tactics is a thing that a lot of people would like, a lot of people at the studio would like to work on; there are a lot of people who like tactics games,” Sawyer began. “The difficulty is figuring out the scope of it, in terms of ‘how many people’ and ‘what sort of visual quality are we going for’ and ‘how big is it?'”.

He continues by explaining that the studio has to figure out a scope for Pillars: Tactics where there’s potential for the game to make money. “Tactics games have a very enthusiastic fanbase, but that fanbase is not humungous,” he explains. You’re guaranteed to attract fans of the tactics genre, but even if every single one of them bought Pillars: Tactics, it still wouldn’t justify a massive triple-A budget.

There may be a reluctance on Sawyer’s part to work on a project with a limited budget, as he previously expressed his desire to work on Pillars of Eternity 3 but only with a budget comparable to Baldur’s Gate 3 ($100 million), about $95 million more than it cost to make Deadfire. Following Pillars, Sawyer directed Pentiment, a passion project created by a small team of history buffs at Obsidian.

This isn’t the first time that Sawyer has mentioned Obsidian’s strong desire to create Pillars: Tactics, so perhaps with the success of Avowed there’s a stronger chance of the project being greenlit.

Systems

Released

February 18, 2025

ESRB

Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Violence