New Vegas lead Josh Sawyer thinks turn-based combat fell off in the 2000s due to a lack of 'tactical variation': Even Fallout 1 would 'get to the point where you're always doing nut shots and eye shots'

Before a recent interview with Obsidian studio design director Josh Sawyer, I was tasked with a crucial mission by a different games industry Josh. PCG news writer Joshua Wolens wanted Josh the Elder's take on the apparent final victory of turn-based combat over real time with pause, as represented by recent hits like Baldur's Gate 3, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

A quick definition for those who are less obsessed with RPG minutia: Real time with pause (RTWP) is when you can halt the action at any time to issue commands to your party, but don't control characters directly like in an action game or take fully segmented turns. The original Baldur's Gates, Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age: Origins are all examples of RTWP games.

"I think that the success of real time with pause, back when I started [in the late 1990s], was due to the prevalence of the RTS genre," Sawyer told me. "Also turn-based games, at that time, there wasn't a huge amount of tactical variation in them. Like, I love Fallout and the combat is super satisfying, but it does kind of get to a point where you're always doing nut shots and eye shots, and you're trying to get 3x armor-bypassing criticals.

"You get to that point, and you're using sniper rifles and plasma rifles to just do that. It's still very satisfying, but the tactical depth kind of goes away, or really, the complexity gets flattened."

That's in line with my own experience with the OG Fallouts, which had fun combat and great character building, but didn't give you much variety on what you can do in a given turn. They additionally lacked party control for your companions⁠—they kind of just did whatever. The delightful "nut shots and eye shots" refer to the targeted shot system in those games⁠—the ancestor of VATS in Fallout 3 on⁠ward—which offered more granular options of what to target.

Sawyer thinks that the variety and micromanagement skill ceiling of RTS units (StarCraft, Command & Conquer) were a natural fit for RPGs, and the BioWare designers who started the RTWP push seem to have clocked the same thing. Select your Fighter or Archer and just click on enemies if you want something more approachable, while Thieves and Mages bring a more crunchy, micro-intensive playstyle.

These days, though, you can find that dynamism and excitement in turn-based games without having to accept RTWP's inherent compromises when it comes to controls and approachability. "With [Baldur's Gate 3], I think a lot of it is, there's just a lot to do," Sawyer said of the new turn-based CRPG champ. "There's a lot of control. I will say I think that interface could be maybe a little friendlier or tightened up, but it gives you a lot of options of things to do, and it's just fun.

"It's just fun to goof around in turn-based, which is not often the case, or at least it wasn't in the past. I'm sure there is some market for real time with pause, but it does seem to be in the minority now."

I have to agree: I love the OG Fallouts, but contrast the nut shot/eye shot meta with the sheer wealth of choices and systemic interactions you can see in a single BG3 turn, from the very beginning of the game all the way through level 12.

As for RTWP, it's now the desktop-bound dinosaur compared to turn-based games, which increasingly have not compromised their complexity or approachability to work on both gamepad and mouse+keyboard. Raise your hand if you've ever told a Baldur's Gate 1 companion to do something, unpaused the game, and watched them try to circumnavigate the globe in the opposite direction to do it.

Sawyer also expanded on his critique about romance in RPGs during our chat. You can read more about that, as well as the one recent RPG he thinks nailed the concept, in my first article from the interview.