It’s been a great year for roleplaying game fans thanks to the release of several great games, chiefly the long-awaited cRPG Baldur’s Gate 3 (now in pole position for Game of the Year awards after a near-flawless critical reception), and Owlcat Games made it even better when it announced that Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader would launch in early December on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X.
Given that inXile and Obsidian have abandoned the cRPG genre, at least for the time being, their next projects focused on first-person action combat, Owlcat is definitely the most experienced studio after Larian. Their Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous games have been received very well on PC and consoles alike.
With Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader, the studio is set to deliver the first cRPG set in the grimdark universe created by Games Workshop. Ahead of the upcoming launch, I briefly chatted with Alexander Mishulin, Creative Director at Owlcat Games. Topics ranged from addressing the community’s feedback obtained through beta tests, providing more varied romances, and thanking Larian for Baldur’s Gate 3’s role in expanding the cRPG genre.
Let’s begin with the preparation phase before battles. Is it always available or only in certain situations?
It’s mostly available. Only when you are stepping into an ambush will you be unable to take the preparation phase, and you will be forced to fight in the positions you were in. But there aren’t many of these scenarios in Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader, maybe one in ten or even one in twenty.
I have a question regarding the rule set. You’ve previously made the Pathfinder games and adapted that rule set. Now, you are adapting the Rogue Trader ruleset right for this game. Can you speak to the differences in adapting these two different rulesets from tabletop to the videogame format? Also, what kind of changes did you make for Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader?
Sure. It’s actually the approach to the adaptation is different. With those two Pathfinder games, we were striving to be as close to the tabletop experience as we possibly could, while in Rogue Trader, we mostly took inspiration from tabletop rules.
The skills are kind of the same. Some abilities have similar names, but all the mechanics inside are our own, and one of the reasons for that is we have to have a very long progression for the characters. The Rogue Trader system is not very rich in terms of abilities, spells, and everything, so we had to add more elements to provide more builds for the characters and more synergies between different characters. So, the approach is different for these games.
I know that you’ve had a beta test a while ago. What kind of feedback did you get from the community, and what will you implement based on their advice in the final game?
We got a lot of feedback because a lot of players played it. We got a lot of praise and a lot of suggestions. I can give you a couple of examples. We had mixed feedback about the space battles. Not all the rules were transparent for the players, and some of the battles seemed repetitive.
We are making an additional bunch of tutorials to cover all of the space battles to slowly introduce players to the mechanics. The idea behind them is kind of naval battles, so you have to align broadside with the enemy’s and things like that. You also have a bunch of abilities. Enemies will act differently, depending on who they are. Pirates are a little bit sneaky, while Chaos is very fanatical and unpredictable. You have to adapt your strategies depending on your enemy. We are introducing even more differences to those enemies as well to be more understandable but less repetitive.
We are also making a pass for our items because of the feedback and because we felt that our item progression is not as great as it is. So we are making a pass to introduce more items with interesting powers and distribute them through the game, allowing even deeper build customization because a lot of these unique weapons and items will have their own abilities that work well with certain characters and certain builds.
Of course, there’s also a huge bunch of bug fixes and changes on particular occasions, in particular dialogues where a character could be reacting to something.
Will the game launch in early access, or are you planning a full game launch right away?
We are not looking into the early access model for Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader. In our opinion, the previous tests made with those players who bought the Founder’s Packs allowed us to get enough feedback and improve the game to the point where it’s ready.
You’ve recently announced the co-op mode, a new feature for your games. Can you tell me how that’s going to work?
I cannot unfortunately because, for now, we’re just saying that it will be present in our game. But no additional details right now. Sorry!
I know the game is also coming to consoles simultaneously, which is great news. Can you confirm that gamepad support will also be available on PC on day one?
Yes. Internally, we are already play testing and playing Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader with controllers. There are still some tweaks and turns and we have to update the tutorial to provide hints on the gamepad mode. So, it’s still in the final stages of production, but it’s very playable with the gamepad.
I think the previous Pathfinder games were quite moddable. Is this one going to be moddable as well?
We as a studio definitely understand how important mods are. Right now, it’s hard to compare the final result with the Pathfinder series. The team is discussing this topic, and there is a possibility of additional support.
The elephant in the room is the incredible success that Larian is having in the genre with Baldur’s Gate 3. What are your feelings about it? Do you think there will be more players looking for other CRPGs? What’s your take on this renewed interest in the genre?
Exactly. We’re really grateful to Larian and Baldur’s Gate 3 as the number of players interested in cRPGs is growing and expanding into a larger, more mass market direction.
We hope that when players are finished enjoying Baldur’s Gate 3 one time or two times, they will be looking for new experiences. And it’s great for the genre as a whole, not just for our game, because there are many great cRPG experiences. Probably, those players who enjoyed Baldur’s Gate 3 will be finding new cRPG games to enjoy, which is great.
One of the main advancements of Baldur’s Gate 3 was its abundance of high-quality cinematics. Do you also have many cinematics in Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader?
We have more cinematics than in our previous games, but not as much as those in Baldur’s Gate 3 because they have enormous production value.
Fair enough. Another thing that made it stand out from the rest is the amount of romantic relationships. I know romance is also possible in Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader. Can you talk a bit about that part of your game?
Yeah. It’s challenging to write a romance in the world of Warhammer 40K, where there is only war. We also tried to look at romances from different directions this time.
For example, a romance with one of the characters could go in a couple of different directions. It could be something closer to a political dynasty marriage where you just have this arrangement because it is convenient for you and this character.
But you can also play a little bit different. It is more difficult to do and to move off of and it starts from the same position. But slowly, feelings emerge, and characters become more involved with each other and understand each other better, and it grows not into this dynasty marriage but into a full-fledged romance with all the twists and turns and everything. So you can expect some twists and unexpected things in the romances.
Can you talk about the recently announced release date?
For our previous game, we had to move the release date a couple of times. We didn’t want to do that in this game, so we tried to be really careful and understand when it could happen according to our development schedule.
Thank you for your time.
