The late 1990s were a second golden age for PC RPGs and one of the people behind that era’s surge of quality games was Obsidian’s own Josh Sawyer. As one of the creative minds behind Black Isle’s success, Sawyer helped resurrect Dungeons & Dragons at a time when not just RPGs but D&D itself were considered a kiss of death in the industry.

As a gamer who spent the late 80s and early 90s huddled in front of his SSI Gold Box games, I had to deal with the fact that genre stagnation and lack of originality resulted in the hobby figuratively dying…at least in the eyes of the publishers who found rip-offs of DOOM and Tomb Raider to be safer bets.

Josh Sawyer and his Interplay brethren, the men behind those Infinity Engine games everyone so wistfully recounts in nostalgic youtube videos, changed that.

If you want to read less of my own blathering and instead feel like sitting down with Mr. Sawyer for a half an hour, you can view the video here.

One of the great skills Sawyer and Cain and Avellone brought to that era was the ability to make the staid and stale world of D&D more fascinating than it had ever been. They also managed to make games that were more approachable, allowing those who hadn’t played a CRPG before get into them much more easily.

It was a watershed moment in gaming history and helped revive an entire genre from a seemingly permanent slumber. Simply put, if you want to know why RPGs exist in our current era, you need to watch this video and learn how the hobby was, quite literally, saved.