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Obsidian's Josh Sawyer explains why RPG towns cost so much more than dungeons

In a YouTube Q&A, Obsidian's design director said a populated town runs about four times the cost per square foot of a dungeon map.

By Pip Prototype, Indie & Community Reporter ·

Edited by Dot Matrix, Editor-in-Chief

A studio desk with a crowded hand-drawn town map beside a much smaller dungeon map, with dialogue scripts and an open ledger.
A town map crowded with people costs far more to build than a dungeon. Illustration generated by AI. Illustration generated by AI.

Field note from the cost ledger: the most expensive map in an RPG is usually the one with the most people standing around in it.

Obsidian studio design director Josh Sawyer made that case in a new Q&A vlog on his YouTube channel, answering a question about why so few RPGs are set in contemporary urban places. 1

His answer is a number. “Compared to a dungeon, generally speaking, a town is four times the expense per square foot, basically.” He called it a generalization, and said the “square foot” is really about a map of a given size: a dungeon of that size costs X, while a town of the same size that feels realistic costs four times as much. 1

Sawyer says it shows up in Obsidian’s own work. As the team works through areas, they reach the end and realize they spent forever on the town maps. 1

The example he gave is Twin Elms in Pillars of Eternity, which the team had to build at the end of the game. He described it as a pacing problem that many players did not appreciate, and as very expensive content. 1

The expense comes from people. Towns have a high density of NPCs, and many of them carry dialogue. They are not necessarily unique in appearance, but Sawyer says a lot more custom work goes into setting up a town than a dungeon. 1

He also named games that pull off dense, believable cities: Baldur’s Gate 2’s Athkatla, Disco Elysium and the recent Zero Parades. He noted the latter two have an edge, since they don’t need as many believable combat encounters as other RPGs. 1

Our read: The 4x figure is Sawyer’s own rough rule, not an audited budget, but the reasoning is easy to follow: every extra person on a map needs dialogue and custom setup. That may be why cities often shrink to a single hub or arrive late in development. The games he cites as successes are the ones that built around the town, not around fights inside it.

Footnotes

  1. PC Gamer, “Obsidian’s Josh Sawyer on RPG cities: ‘Compared to a dungeon, generally speaking, a town is 4x the expense per square foot’”. Retrieved November 1, 2026. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

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