Obsidian's Josh Sawyer says Greek tragedies are the ultimate model for RPG moral choices

Full text

Obsidian Entertainment design director and veteran developer Josh Sawyer likes his RPG choices best when they fall outside of the good versus evil moral binary, and thinks games could learn a thing or two from those Ancient Greek tragedies from thousands of years ago.

In a new YouTube video talking about where his inspirations and influences come from, Sawyer says he takes "a lot from plays, actually," since he originally went to school to study theater before switching to the history department. That background probably makes more sense when you consider some of the games he's directed, gorgeous whodunnit Pentiment and Fallout: New Vegas included.

"This will sound corny, but especially because of the games that Obsidian works on, I think a lot about Greek plays," he explains, pointing to Antigone and The Oresteia. "You have a lot of moral and ethical decisions that are extremely difficult [in those plays]. Characters are put in situations that are truly, in the literal sense, agonizing and they're forced to make terrible decisions and those decisions are never purely good or they're never purely bad... I think a lot about that when we think about our moral and ethical choices in games."

The long-time RPG developer isn't on a mission to make every player choice as "agonizing" as what Ancient Greek protagonists go through, but Sawyer reckons it's more interesting to have players "sit and think about it," even if those choices lead to uncomfortable feelings, "because it does force us to think about our values."

Strictly good and evil choices aren't totally off the table, he adds, but players don't really ponder those decisions for quite as long. Sawyer's theory is that many players will decide to build either a good or evil character, and then make choices that align with that moral stance for the rest of the game. To him, RPG decisions are best when "individual choices are just not that clear-cut." Again, choosing who to pass the blame onto in Pentiment is a really good example of this, and Sawyer is right to pat himself on the back for that one.

"So Greek plays, they knocked it out of the park thousands of years ago," he says. "Why not look at them?"

Modern RPGs have largely moved past that moral binary in recent times. Games like The Witcher 3 and Baldur's Gate 3 don't have a bar that goes from red to blue depending on who you smooch or smother, for example. And even Fable, a series that was famous for its totally good and totally evil choices, is ditching that black and white thinking in favor of a reputation system where your actions are subjective . Times are a-changing.

How a parchment of ideas evolved into the RPG work of art that is Pentiment.