Obsidian’s Josh Sawyer on RPG cities: ‘Compared to a dungeon, generally speaking, a town is 4x the expense per square foot’

“One of the issues as an RPG developer that we’ve found⁠—at least at Obsidian and Black Isle⁠—is that, compared to a dungeon, generally speaking, a town is four times the expense per square foot, basically. Not really “square foot” but, if you have a map of a given size. If you have a dungeon that’s this big, it costs X. If you have a town that’s populated with people that feels realistic, that’s four times as expensive.

“Obviously, that’s a generalization, but that’s something that is reflected in our [past] work. As we work on areas over time, when we get towards the end, we realize: ‘Holy crap, we spent forever trying to do these maps.’

“For example, at the end of [Pillars of Eternity], we had to do Twin Elms. And that was, one: A big pacing landmine that a lot of people did not appreciate⁠—so, sorry about that. But also, we’re back to doing very expensive content. You might ask: ‘Well, what’s the expense?’

“There’s a high density of NPCs, a lot of characters have dialogue. They have their own⁠—maybe not super-unique appearances⁠—but there’s just a lot more custom stuff that goes into setting up towns, usually. They’re more expensive. Obviously you can do it, though.”