After 26 years, Josh Sawyer still wants a better armor system

Josh Sawyer, Obsidian's design director and an RPG developer since the early augs, has spent more than 25 years making games. A longtime Darklands enthusiast, he has cited that 1992 RPG as a major influence on his 2022 game Pentiment and has discussed it often on his reinvigorated YouTube channel; his latest video is titled Armor Chat.

Sawyer is candid about Avowed's armor system, saying it "is not really what I had in mind." He worked on Avowed in an advisory capacity and did "a little bit of writing," while director duties were handed to Carrie Patel, who left Obsidian in 2025. The system was originally designed as a progression gate that would force players to upgrade gear; it had several issues, many of which were patched soon after release.

One problem Sawyer highlights is a secondary damage threshold that applied a flat reduction after an initial percentage-based reduction, which "didn't scale with damage" as damage values rose dramatically.

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