Baldur’s Gate 3’s Early Access model wouldn’t have saved Pillars of Eternity 2 from its launch “miss,” says director

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“My philosophy for our backer betas was to highlight side content,” Sawyer noted. “These were areas players would encounter mid-game, but they weren’t essential narrative milestones. By focusing on non-critical paths, any early quality dips from constant iteration wouldn’t fundamentally damage the player’s perception of the core game’s polish.”

Despite the insights gained from these betas, Sawyer admits there was a major oversight regarding *Pillars of Eternity 2*: the team failed to properly balance the “Veteran” and “Path of the Damned” difficulty settings prior to the game’s release.

“Tuning those higher difficulties required a lot of attention that we simply didn’t provide in time,” he confessed. “That responsibility falls on me. We addressed it with a patch about two weeks after launch, but in retrospect, I should have prioritized that balance pass earlier in the development cycle. It wasn’t an issue with the backer beta itself, but rather how I allocated our resources during those final months.”

Pillars of Eternity and Deadfire Backer Betas – YouTube

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Sawyer then pointed to Larian Studios’ *Baldur’s Gate 3*, which maintained its first act in early access for nearly three years before the full game’s debut. He suggests that even if Obsidian had adopted a similar focus on the early game, the outcome might not have changed. “As games progress, balance issues naturally magnify because the systems are handling more complex variables. I don’t believe shifting the test’s focus would have magically prevented the problems we faced,” he explained.

“Furthermore—and this is an observation, not a slight—many players felt the third act of *Baldur’s Gate 3* lacked the same level of polish and balance seen in the beginning,” Sawyer continued. “That’s a common side effect when the early game receives thousands of hours of public testing while the finale remains largely behind closed doors. It’s almost inevitable that things slip through the cracks.”

Ultimately, while Sawyer doesn’t consider the *Pillars* backer betas perfect, he believes they were fundamentally sound. His takeaway for future projects isn’t to change the testing model, but to be more strategic about how developmental resources are spent as the finish line approaches.

Sawyer also recently hinted that many at Obsidian are eager to develop a Pillars of Eternity Tactics spin-off, though the project hinges on market demand.