- Joined
- Nov 6, 2014
What happens if you just side with the Inquisitor? Or if you don't take the eldar, how do you get to act 3?
Warhammer: 40,000 - Rogue Trader - CRPG by Owlcat games
- Thread starter mindlessobserver
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2021
Recently found out that on Janus a Dogmatic pick is allowing the rebels and xenos to live but not allowing the filthy knife ears to run the planet. Human inhabitants would never accept it is the justification that makes it Dogmatic.
Obviously not a very Dogmatic choice but that it is considered at all Dogmatic when most of them would be, "okay, everyone involved needs to die right now" amused me.
grump
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2016
I'm finding a lot of the mechanics, particularly for ship combat are pretty poorly documented. I lost track of the time I looked at some vague or poorly worded description and had to google it just to find out that apparently no person, forum post, or wiki in the world had ever discussed this particular system. Not sure how much of this is due to the gigantic number of processes they have and how much is due to the player count and if I should knock them or give them credit for having such an inordinate amount of mechanics that even sweaty cRPG nerds haven't yet been able to do their usual thing of writing encyclopedias on every single faucet of it.
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2018
if it's the plot point I'm thinking of, an NPC betrays you in the same way as Yrliet, basically just taking her place.
From what I've heard, that version of events makes more sense, especially if you're on good terms with Yrliet. People have been begging Owlcat to make the alternate version happen if you're friendly with Yrliet but they keep refusing. I'm guessing it'd cause too many problems with chapter three in terms of Yrliet's content.
RSU 1741
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2021
As Tor Lugosi said, an NPC betrays you. One of Heinrix's followers on your capital world was broken by Dark Eldar torture and betrays you before getting shanked. It makes a lot more sense than Yrliet sudden complete retardation and it's even half-decently written.
Because no one cares and ship combat is kind of easy.
It's considered Dogmatic but the Inquisitor calls you out for it.
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2022
Side topic but Owlcat recently responded to a few hundred questions they got asked as part of an AMA. I urge you to read it yourself.
TL;DR: They're being coy about the 4 projects they're working on. They have a workforce of 450 people now, working on one CRPG, one big RPG using Unreal like BG3 and two other genre projects. They're also a publisher now. They're allocating more resources to full voice acting and the big RPG will have full VO while that new CRPG will probably still be voice over/text in places.
WoD, Warcraft, Dark Heresy, Shadowrun, Starfinder were all brought up and casually sidestepped.
I've had to split my post as the interview is more than 64k characters.
In december, we've gathered a massive list of player questions. We're finally ready to answer them. Let's go!
Will there be another WH40K CRPG? Dark Heresy, Black Crusade, Only War?
If we would be making another CRPG in 40k universe, these all definitely sound like they'd have a great potential.
We have a number of reveals planned for this year, where we will tell you guys what to expect next. Stay tuned!
Would owlcat ever make a Shadowrun crpg?
The setting is awesome and there are people in the team who'd be really excited to work on it, should an opportunity arise. It's not among the games we're currently developing, though.
(Harebrained would be open to giving them a shot with the license I think).
Will owlcat make a CRPG in their own original IP like Larian has done with Divinity?
Which developer doesn't dream about their own franchise? Of course eventually we hope to! It's not on the horizon just yet though.
Will we ever get a starfinder game?
We like the idea about a game in a space setting, but we aren't developing any Starfinder games right now.
Will Rogue Trader be supported with content updates for the same length of time as WOTR was? WOTR has A LOT of content and I would love to see Roguetrader get similar amounts of content because we dont have many Sci Fi CRPGs.
Hopefully! WotR was supported for so long because you guys remained so invested for all these years, playing it, discussing it, and making content for it. As long as the attention to the game remains high, the DLC sales are good enough, and there's enough people on the development team willing to work on the game (and who are not desperately needed elsewhere), it's always worth to continue updating the game.
Can we look forward to more owlcat CRPGs in licensed IPs?
Absolutely.
Does owlcat prefer sci-fi crpgs like wh40k or traditional fantasy like pathfinder?
Both sci-fi and fantasy have their charm. We don't want to limit ourselves by sticking to only one of them. Besides, it's good to be able to switch from one to another to keep the enthusiasm up.
Any plans for Pathfinder 3? Will Owlcat ever return to Pathfinder? If it happens, will it be PF2e?
We love Pathfinder and remain in touch with our friends at Paizo, so we keep the idea in mind. But currently all teams in the studio are occupied with other projects. In regards to an edition, nothing is set in stone, but we'd certainly be open to explore PF2E as an option.
When will your new games be announced? What to expect next? Will they also be CRPGs? Which settings will they be based in?
We plan a number of exciting reveals this year. Stay tuned!
Kingmaker, Wrath of the Righteous, and Rogue Trader all have your player character in positions of power that give them large amounts of freedom in the worlds they reside in. Will the trend of politically powerful protagonists continue in your future titles? Will there be further systems similar to mythic paths?
Generally, we like it when a player has an agency to influence the world around them, as it allows for a deeper story. Implementation and scale may vary, though. It already varies even between our existing games - for example, Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous are often said to feel different in that regard.
What are some of the game design lessons the team has learned from Pathfinder : Kingmaker, Wrath of the Righteous and Warhammer 40k : Rogue Trader? Can you elaborate?
Answered by our Game Designer Inanky:
It’s a super complex question: as they are both numerous and very different from each other, depending on the game. While during the development of Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous we were mostly adopting a pre-existing role-playing system as close as possible, during the development of Warhammer40k: Rogue Trader we were mostly doing everything from scratch while trying to preserve the general vibe and most terms from the Fantasy Flight Game TTRPG system
Also, for many developers Kingmaker was the first experience in this genre, or even in game development in general, so many of us basically learned how to make RPGs in general.
We also learned a super important lesson: being passionate about a project is totally felt through the final game. Even though there we had lots of problems - our players still played and loved the game.
I guess, after the release of Rogue Trader we learned another important lesson that is, while obvious, difficult to internalize: players will make much, MUCH more broken builds than you could ever imagine.
Yes, it IS obvious. And yes, it’s still an eye-opening experience each time it happens.
I could go into details: about our leveling system, about encounter design, about item design etc. But I, honestly, don’t think that is super important in and of itself.
It’s much more important to develop general experience and vision.
Were there any companions/other important characters for Rogue Trader who were ultimately scrapped for the final version of the game?
There were once thoughts for a couple more lategame companions for Heretical conviction. A Slaanesh Daemonette and a heretic cultist witch. But they didn't fit into the scope and narrative of the story, and were entirely scrapped early in development.
(
)
Nocturne of Oblivion also had a certain chance to become a companion, but as his personality shaped up, we realised that he felt much more natural as an enigmatic NPC instead.
Will there be romances in your next games?
Of course!
Has Rogue Trader and the DLC sold as expected?
We're in a good spot! Void Shadows was very well-received, and the game has recently crossed the line of 1 million copies sold.
Are there any particular franchises that you're dreaming of working on? If you guys theoretically did have the desire and money to make a game in another sci fi or fantasy setting besides Warhammer 40k or Pathfinder, what setting or IP would you choose?
There's so many of them out there and so hard to choose from! Especially when your team consists of gamers who are fans of a wild variety of different settings.
If you look at our internal list of potential options, you will see nearly everything you can think of. Except maybe the franchises that are known to never be licensed (and even with that, we keep our eye open, because who knows!). But to actually make a game based on a franchise requires multiple factors:
1) There must be a group of skilled professionals inside the studio, who are really enthusiastic about that franchise and ready to become the driving core behind its development.
2) There must be enough people to assemble the full team or at least an opportunity to hire more people.
3) The franchise needs to be popular enough or have a good growth potential. Or simply excite the team beyond comprehension, that also works.
4) Realistic opportunities must exist to obtain the license for that franchise with reasonable terms.
Could you tell us who wrote which companions in Rogue Trader?
If the author wants, they may reveal themselves. By default we prefer to not disclose this information, as there have been cases in the past where it attracted uncomfortable attention to the writers.
Will there be more DLCs for Rogue Trader, besides those already announced?
It isn't 100% set in stone yet, but we do have ideas and plans that we're currently assessing and discussing. The recent DLC of your dreams survey will definitely be helpful.
Are there any plans regarding the ship size in Rogue Trader? Please let us get our hands on a cruiser
It would require a major overhaul of the system. Switching ships was considered at some point during early development, but never went beyond initial ideas. At the moment, the game is not built with it in mind.
Revisiting this certainly crossed our minds, and we know that the players want it, but it may be too much of a technical and narrative challenge to overcome with reasonable resource investments.
We'll see if an opportunity ever arises in future.
Will we ever get an Xbox Series X texture/resolution upgrade for Wrath of the Righteous in the way that PS5 got an upgrade? After Kingmaker was abandoned (I've read and understand why) and now we have the only unoptimized 9th gen console version of WOTR, it does feel bad to be a Owlcat fan on Xbox.
That's a complicated one! :/
PF2 is a massive technical challenge to optimize for consoles. When we assessed the possibility of an upgrade to 9th gen for Xbox, we've ran into having to switch the whole project to newer versions of Unity libraries. Unfortunately that exploded the game in erratic and unpredictable ways, to a point where we realised that fixing all of it would potentially paralyze any other work on the project for -months-. Between DLCs being still in development at that point, and the relatively small size of the game team, we were forced to choose the lesser evil and freeze development of this upgrade. Unfortunately we never really had the opportunity or resources to get back to it so far
We are really sorry for letting the Xbox players down like that. This was a major learning point for us, which made us implement significant improvements to the process for console version development in Rogue Trader, which doesn't have any such issues.
In the future, will you switch to a different game engine, such as Unreal Engine, instead of Unity?
We are already developing at least one project with Unreal Engine, but we wouldn't want our giant expertise in Unity to be wasted. Most likely we'll continue using both, for different projects.
Can we get a hint of what kind of massive side activities (Kingdom/Crusade/Ship management) will be in the next Owlcat title?
Do you enjoy searching for answers?
Will you ever make a Warhammer Fantasy / Old World RPG?
Sounds exciting, but our priorities are elsewhere at the moment. We aren't developing any game in that setting right now.
In a process of developing Rogue Trader, how exactly did collaboration with Games Workshop go? What is their opinion on Rogue Trader now, when the game showed success and gained love from the WH40K community? Did you get feedback from them already? Is there a possibility Rogue Trader' events will be once considered canon?
They are really happy with how the game turned out. We work closely with them all the time, exchanging feedback and opinions.
Considering the events canon would be hard since there are so many different endings depending on player's decisions. You can always consider your outcome canon for yourself though!
(Of course they'd say this, even after GeeDubs rushed them to launch the game).
Is there a final release date yet for Lex Imperialis? Any information you can give us on content as a sneak peek/preview?
Not yet, but currently scheduled for late Spring release, with more information coming closer to the date.
...Do you like dogs?
What are the odds we get something Age of Sigmar related? The Mortal Realms always struck me as better "video game" material than WHFRP.
It's a great setting, but it is not among the list of currently developed projects or plans for the near future.
Do you plan to focus on cRPGs exclusively or are you branching out to other genres? If the answer is yes, to which?
We do plan to experiment with neighbouring genres. In fact, we are already doing so with some of our future projects. They will still be true to the "narrative-driven with complex mechanics" formula though.
Also don't worry, we are not moving away from traditional isometric cRPGs either. Development of the next game in this genre with design philosophy familiar to the 3 previous games, is already in progress.
Yrliet hug dlc and argenta date when? What about RT's and Pasqal's marriage?
Heresy!
Will you continue to support end user mods in your PC releases? The Owlcat games would benefit a lot from enabling the community create custom content like we can do in Neverwinter Nights. That has been a dream of mine for a long time. Does the studio ever intend to do something like that?
Of course. There's already a plenty of mods for all our games available online.
We have provided additional mod tools for Rogue Trader, but we aren't really yet where we'd like to be with mod support, and would like to expand it in future.
Would you consider developing your own mechanics system for the next game, one that prioritizes ease of use and is specifically designed for computer gaming, rather than attempting to adapt a Pen and Paper system to the computer medium?
If there's an existing system for the setting we're using, it often makes sense to adapt one.
If there isn't - we'd have no choice but to invent our own!
How has the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 impacted your plans, your understanding of the market, and your position within it?
It didn't trigger a massive flock of new players, but it definitely increased the awareness of the genre. It has also set new, higher standards, though.
Overall, it didn't affect our creative plans too much. We were interested in making a big and expensive game long before BG3 had its success, and we're slowly increasing scope and production value from project to project similar to what Larian did.
I know that Shadow of the Road is coming in the future, and that you've talked about moving to Unreal Engine as part of your future releases. I suppose that leads to the obvious question: are you building Shadow of the Road in Unity or UE? The trailers look like Unity, but I figure it's worth asking.
It's built with Unity. Note that it's developed by Another Angle Games, and while we assist with various aspects, we are the publishers, not the developers of the game.
As for Owlcat, we aren't exactly moving fully to Unreal Engine either. More like, building a separate internal team for projects in that engine.
Is there an Owlcat "dream project"? Something the whole studio wants the chance to do as a magnum opus?
Each our project is our dream project! We don't work with something we aren't excited with.
Are there any projects out there that got concepted/fleshed out but weren't able to be realized? Obviously you always have features or ideas that get cut from existing games you'd want to add, but I'm more angling for like..."we had this awesome idea for XYZ game but couldn't get the license/couldn't make it happen from a budget or production standpoint?"
Not during the existenсe of Owlcat itself. Within realistic boundaries we were always able to work on what we love.
Do you think the Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous DLCs were successful? How are you approaching DLC development now compared to the last game?
The most successfull ones were The Last Sarkorians and A Dance of Masks. What we definitely figured out is that the players enjoy when the DLC contains a bit of content for every type of player (not just a single category like mechanics), when it's deep on narrative, and when it's integrated into the game rather than offering a side story.
...Also that making the first DLC so heavily reliant on puzzles was probably not a very good idea.
Is there even the slightest chance that you will add jump packs to the game?
We discussed this, but there are a lot of technical complications.
Not only the maps are not big enough for this, but with the way the level geometry currently works in the game, all holes and chasms are effectively impassable for all units.
A jump pack character would either have to move around them, which would look odd, or ALL locations in the game would have to be reassembled with jump packs in mind, which is an ocean of work and a toll on performance.
Still, we are really fond of the idea itself, so it isn't completely impossible we'll eventually find a solution of some sort.
Are you planning to expand cut scenes for existing romances in the game?
It looks like something we might consider, but we don't have any specific plans at the moment.
Will new portraits be added to RT?
There will be new portraits in Lex Imperials, yes.
Will there be more portraits for Wrath of the Righteous?
Development for Wrath of the Righteous is largely finished, so no. There's a plenty of fan made portrait packs though. We recommend taking a look online.
What casting process do you go through with the voice actors? Are the auditions submitted to agency’s?
We work through the agencies, yes.
Will future Rogue Trader DLC's expand the star map? Would love to see new systems to explore.
Yes, there will be new star systems. Namely, Lex Imperialis will have a few.
What's your favourite quest in a) Any Owlcat game and b) Any non-Owlcat game.
There's a good few hundreds of opinions on this subject, depending on the member of the team!
CM Starrok has taken the liberty to answer this one, and his favourite quest was saving Targona and healing her wing as an Angel in Wrath of the Righteous - that was so morally satisfying! For a non-owlcat game, that'd probably be the hag's storyline in Baldur's Gate 3, it was creepy to perfection.
Could you go into more details about RT development, in case of stuff being thought about, bare minimum implementation and being cut durring development like Sentinel Pride, CSM terminators etc.
Both the terminators and the missing segment of Santiel's Pride were cut due to the impossibility to realistically finish them in time with existing resources, as often happens with these things. Unfortunately, these sad moments are inevitable for any creative process.
Sometimes half-baked content like this makes a return in future updates and DLCs. While we can't promise anything specific, we have the history of coming back to similar things before.
(Sentinel's Pride is that Chorda frozen world in Act 4, highly detailed, no quest apart from Mazarai's personal one).
In alpha version of RT, overall game balance and system was more closer to TT version, stuff like righteous fury (crit in later version), psyker powers not being limited to staves, armor value and overall numbers being lower. What was reason for changing it to more homebrewed system that ended up being far more problematic and still persists in form of dlc 1 classes and items (executioner and chainsaws being prime suspects)
Answered by our Game Designer Inanky: Alpha version of Rogue Trader was a much more focused experience, consisting of a small part of the overall game. It allowed to test different things, some of which actually worked well, some of which worked seemingly well.
The problem is, when you try to scale those things and decisions to the whole game - lots of cracks show up.
Some of the systems just didn’t work for a 80+ hour experience.
Some of the systems, while scaled, didn’t give the overall feeling of the space power fantasy of Warhammer40k.
Some of the systems, while scaled, turned out just, well, bad.
And that’s the reality of game development - you can learn that some things just don’t work much later into development, and you have to change a lot of stuff.
Yes, some of the decisions were probably wrong, but they were all made for reasons, important ones at that. It’s not like we just one day decided to change everything for worse (god no, nobody likes to change anything, it’s SO MUCH work)!
Is there any plans to update Ulfar's gear options? He is considerably weaker than all the other companions especially since the Xenos allies got access to most of the normal gearing.
Yes, we see a lot of community feedback on this. We're currently reviewing his (and Uralon's) itemization, build and usability in the party, no specific dates when it'll be coming yet though.
I absolutely love the complexity of your games and the way the difficulty can be perfectly customized for a real challenge. However, in Rogue Trader, the progression sometimes felt a bit overwhelming. Are there any plans to make progression in your next games a bit more user-friendly, especially for newcomers?
We feel we've improved in this aspect since Pathfinder, as apparently Rogue Trader is considered easier to comprehend.
But there are some features that we feel could improve the experience. UI and tutorials could use some polish. We also still want to add automatic leveling. That could be useful for quickly putting a shelved companion back in action, returning to the game after a break, or simply when the player is interested in the story rather than mechanics.
Are there any companions or any other major characters in any of your games that were decided to be added at the (almost) last moment, and were not originally planned as part of the story? Or was everything thought out in advance?
Not really. Companions are always among the first things to be planned during development. We often know their general outline long before the story takes its final shape.
What was in the box the Nocturne of Oblivion gifted RT with?
To hope to see a different close of fate,
To don their dreams and think themselves reforged,
The lot it is of wishers and the doomed.
This trove of tears for futures still unplayed
May open yet and welcome them. Alas,
The curtain's far from sewn, no board is laid.
My simple question is why were no additional “races “with new companions varieties added in wrath of righteous when there’s so many varieties of classes.
Races and companions are by a margin more expensive to add than classes. They require a whole new set of models, customization options, animations, item visuals scaling, narrative integration into the world and more. It's not impossible within a scope of a DLC (we've added Tieflings in Kingmaker before), but it leaves little room for anything else in that DLC.
Besides, we simply did have other ideas for the set of DLCs in Wrath of the Righteous. Looking back, adding a new race would have probably been received better than some of the content of the DLCs we released, but unfortunately we don't have a spare Aeon in the studio to turn back time.
As an avid player of the trpg I had hoped to see more of the creatures and dangers local to the Koronus expanse, and was a little disappointed to see how comparatively little we saw of the Yu’vath, the Egarians or the Orcs of ‘Undred ‘Undred Teef. So I’m kinda curious to know why you didn’t include them.
There's only so much you can include within a game. Rogue Trader is already a very large game and already covers a big chunk of the setting's races and factions, giving a nod even to some of the less known Koronus-specific races. Remember the planet with the laser beam puzzle? That's Khrave ruins.
We might expand the options in future DLCs, however.
After developing 3 amazing games, what do you think is the biggest lesson the team has learned while developing each game ?
Make the games you are yourself excited with, and be honest with yourself and your audience.
(This right here is a healthy developer mindset).
What aspect of each game did you think was the most fun and what aspect did you think did not turn out as well as the team hoped?
Each of the developers would probably name their own aspects.
The only thing that the devs would probably universally agree about, is that the Crusade in Wrath of the Righteous didn't turn out as good as we'd hope it would be. It received multiple waves of improvements to make it better, but if we had a spare Aeon, we'd probably design it differently.
Do you have any rough idea when Rogue Trader may be "complete" and finished with story DLC?
All our games are finished stories with a staggering amount of content, so we don't advice you to wait with playing them. You won't see everything even in multiple playthroughs anyway.
It's important to understand that we never intentionally design an even bigger game to later cut it into multiple pieces and sell them as DLCs. Our DLCs are additions, opportunities to expand the game with more ideas, mechanics and stories, many of which come to us long after the game was released. They are also an opportunity to address popular player wishes.We don't have any set in stone decision when we will be done with DLCs for Rogue Trader. It depends on the availibility of the team and on the financial viability - there needs to be a skilled team with enthusiasm to make them, and the game needs to still have enough audience to pay off development costs.
Any idea how difficult it would be to a) get a license for a Pathfinder 2e license and b) actually make a PF2E game that is pretty consistent with the tabletop rules?
Slightly more difficult than making a new PF1E game, simply because there's such a giant pile of mechanics to overhaul and update. Nothing impossible though.
Why do you guys seems to have a fondness for evil characters like daeran, regill, marazhai, wenduag, camellia, etc as companions? Or just comes as you write the main plot ?
We prefer to offer a wide variety of options for all playstyles and preferences. And we are happy that our evil characters always find their audience!
Do you play your Parhfinder games using turn-based combat, or real-time with pause? Which of the two systems do you prefer, as a player?
Each dev has their own views on this.
However, it seems to be more or less universally agreed across the community that the mix of RtwP for easier fights and TB for difficult fight is probably the optimal approach.
Will there be orks or tau in DLCs for RT?
There are certain narrative and mechanical challenges to resolve, but it's something to consider.
Will we eventually see full voice acting for Rogue Trader?
Unlikely, as this is a very expensive endeavour.
Is it true that Ember was originally envisioned as an actual child but had to be changed to a young adult with childlike characteristics at the last minute, due to censorship laws?
That's not true. Ember was always supposed to be a young woman with childlike mentality. Here's a true fact about her, though: originally her name was Cinder, but we already had Camellia (name as written starts with "C") and Seelah (name as pronounced starts with "S"), so we didn't want the players to get confused with more similar sounding names.
Will we ever kill Rasputin in a game?
Haven't really considered it.
Why is rogue trader more linear than wotr?
That's a debatable statement. The games have a similar amount of content. It could feel more linear for you because Wrath of the Righteous had more visually and narratively distinct Mythic Paths than RT has Convictions.
But it's important to understand that Wrath was a sequel. All basic gameplay elements were already in place since Kingmaker. Thanks to that, we had the opportunity to focus on going wider and more branched, while in RT everything had to be built from scratch.
Can we expect in the future the release of some Behind the Scenes of the voice actors of your games? I really enjoyed the small video you released on the Dance of Masks dlc showing some of the voice talent behind your games.
That is possible! We love to do these when we have the opportunity.
If you haven't yet, make sure to check out the interviews with the voice actors from the Rogue Trader cast on our Youtube channel, and the Christmas Special TTRPG event with them on Kormakrtv's channel.
Arueshalae, after completing her personal quest and being fully redeemed, becomes fully mortal? So is she now just a human/tiefling with horns, tail and wings? Or just a «mortal succubus»? Will she age in a physical sense since she talks about Phrasma’s judgment in the dialog at the end of Dance of the Masks?
Arueshalae, in her good ending, has committed quite a unique feat. There are no set rules for miracles, so, honestly, we don't know. As for Pharasma's judgement -- nobody escapes it, it has nothing to do with aging.
Will there be more Necron content in future DLCs? Currently, they appear way too late in the game and have way too little content. It feels like there is a lot of untapped potential, especially considering how cool their models and locations look.
It's a good direction to explore, but we don't have any specific plans yet.
Is Theodora's reflection we see near the end of the game the real Theodora from the past?
Some things best remain vague for the sake of the story. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. It's important what YOU think it was, for your character.
Would you reconsider your decision and add another season pass and with it DLC’s to Wrath of the Righteous?
Don't think so. The development for the game has been finished, and most of the team has moved on to the other projects at this point.
Both Daeron's and Camellia's romances were added because of a stretch goal for the kickstarter. It's hard to imagine the characters without a romance now, so were the characters radically changed to fit them now having a romance?
They haven't changed all that much. We already had the idea how to write them if the goal would be reached, and of course we were really happy to proceed with their stories (and romances) when we had the confirmation. We'd only have to come up with a non-romance option if the Kickstarter goal would have failed (and we'd have a lesser narrative budget as a result).
Were there any characters (both companions and npcs) that you wanted to give romances but couldn't implement for any reason?
A... Doesn't matter.
(A...rgenta. They really did want too but Geedubs stopped them).
I get the sense someone in your studio is a fan of the Eldar would I also be correct in that?
There are definitely a few!
I've noticed you guys don't like to have any randomness in your character creations, like no rolling for stats or anything, even when that's the standard mode of the ttrpg you are adapting. Any reason for this, and would any say ttrpg be an exception?
Answered by our Game Designer Inanky: I don’t think we ever seriously discussed this topic, probably because it felt pretty obvious.
While it may be fun to sit for 30 minutes clicking “Reroll stats”, waiting for the perfect combination of characteristics (and ultimately stopping at somewhat okayish cause you are so tired of clicking), it’s not the type of experience we want for our players.
We wanted them to actually make the character they want, not the character they rolled.
Plus, while being, actually, a minor point, it makes balancing everything a little bit easier.
Also, as a strictly personal reason: I hate random character creation, I freaking suck at rolling dice
"
Are there plans to update basic animations of RT to be on par with DLC class, so far its like earth and heaven difference to how good blademaster feels compare to stiff warrior.
We thought of this, but after analysing the polls, it seems like you guys put animations rather low (if not last) on the list of priorities between other things you'd want to see improved.
Do you think we should reconsider that?
Can you please stop changing "that special heretic" sword from 2handed to 1handed and back so many times, its ruining my plans for builds...or at least maybe add more 2h swords so you can plan around using them?
Chaos is everchanging!
Why it feels like you as studio backtracking on the difficulty and complexity of your games? Every game(considering its only 3) feels easier than other, KM could punch you even on normal, while WotR's hard barely feels like normal, RT's Unfair is...pretty much a joke of a difficulty and nothing provides any challenge, dont want to sound offensive but i honestly got so much bored on consecutive runs of RT due to it(even if using meme builds), compare to Pathfinders, facerolling isn't fun.
Wrath might feel slightly easier because it fixed a few annoying elements from KM such as swarms, and offered an overpowered Mythic system. If exploited, it allows for new heights of build effectiveness.
Rogue Trader was a new system for us, so some fluctuations of complexity were unavoidable. All in all, this is more of a coincidence than an inherent directive to make each next game easier.
Either way, we do plan to continue looking at difficulty and balance in Rogue Trader as the time goes on. We will soon conduct player surveys related to this, so make sure to take part!
Any plans to add Voices to "secret companions" of RT and Nocturne?
There are no current plans to do so.
Can you share the lyrics on the Rogue Trader OST tracks that have vocals? Or at least a song or two. I remember reading how the Wrath of the Righteous main theme mentions Galfrey and such, and would love similar look into RT music. I would especially love to know what the lyrics on the Reaving Tempest track by Nikolay Filipovich say!
They don't contain any meaningful lyrics. Only imitate them.
Why do all your games got such a heavy empathis on redemption? Like both the idea that everyone deserves a second chance aswell as seeking salvation is a recurring theme on both Pathfinder games and even the rogue trader game
Swarm-that-walks looks at you with disappointment. And hunger.
I love the writing for Nok-Nok and the monstrous races. How do you go about writing their... not just "bad," but almost childish grammar? Do you start with a normal sentence, then convert it? Does someone on the team just have a knack for it?
The credit for Nok-Nok goes to Chris Avellone. And Paizo, who invented the goblin speech you see in some Adventure Paths. But we did write quite a few different monsters ourselves, too.
When you need to write a monster talking, you approach it from two sides. You come up with iconic words the race is going to use - such as longshanks, borba, etc. Then you write the phrases, using these iconic words and twisting the other words in a similar way.
(Chris Avellone reference. Mind you this was back in 2016, before he got Me Tooed. I know he helped with WOTR but I don't think he was involved with Rogue Trader).
Will we get a void battle focused DLC? E.g. standalone like Midnight Isles but for void battles and bigger fleets.
Reception for the space battles is noticeably better than for other side-systems in our previous games, so the idea to somehow expand or improve the space combat is hovering in the air.
Can't say if this will happen and how exactly, but we may consider it.
Hey Owlcats writing team, if you were to pick another Pathfinder AP to make into a game, what would you pick?
Answered by narrative designer Thainen: My dream Pathfinder game is Iron Gods. Unlikely to ever happen, but let me dream.
Owlcats Voice Acting directors and writers, who has been your fave actors to work with? And if you could get any Voice Actor who has worked on one of your games to voice act any thing strange but completely in character for the character, who would you pick and what would they say for you?
Our VA cast is beyond amazing. So much that it feels inappropriate to point out anyone specific. They've all been super involved in the process and are very happy to support the game after release. You may have seen a lot of them voicing the memes, chatting to the audience or coming to streams. We recommend checking out the recent stream with the actors on our youtube channel!
Have Owlcats been playing Pathfinder 2e? Tried the Starfinder 2e playtest?
At least one of our lead level designers is actively playing and GMing Pathfinder 2e (happens to be the same misanthrope who came up with Playful Darkness, by the way).
Some Owlcats are occasionally playing Pathfinder 2e as well. Starfinder 2e playtest wasn't played in-house, but we have a lot of people in the studio, so someone may be playing it with someone else than colleagues.
(That Fucker, Playful Darkness's AC is 94. Lantern King in Kingmaker is 54 and Areelu's AC is 67. And you meet him at the end of Act 3, before you get the power-spike of Act 4 +4 weapons, most people are probably still using +2).
Pathfinder has so many Iconics (the pregen characters to Society games); have you looked at them all? Got a favourite? Is there an Iconic that Owlcats are thinking about for your next Pathfinder AP, if there's going to be one?
Answered by narrative designer Thainen: Merisiel and Kyra, as a couple. Having them in the party together would open so many interesting possibilities!
As someone who has played all of the owlcat games in vanilla, one of the main issues I feel is apparent in all of the titles is that the tail end have been pretty weak, especially in Rogue Trader and Wrath due to the party taking a detour. If this is also a sentiment shared by the devs and writers, how would Owlcat try to approach the story structure for future projects?
We have seen the sentiment from some players that the density of content in our games seems to fall off by the final chapters. Severity of this problem is debatable, but we acknowledge its existence.
As in any creative process, things don't always go as planned, so by the end of development things sometimes get rushed to finish everything in time. This leads to some loose ends being cut.
While this issue is probably impossible to completely avoid, we've been optimizing our processes over time. We learn and improve. We also tend to come back to the problematic spots over time, boosting them with additional content in free updates or locating DLC content in less dense areas.
In an interview, I believe it was mentioned that BG3 has given Owlcat inspiration, what avenues would you guys want to improve upon and how would it be implemented?
BG3 was the most played non-Owlcat game both in 2023 and 2024 for the studio. It was inspiring in many ways, of course!
Not only because we had the chance to compare the approach and design, making notes on how we could improve our own creations. But also because it was a rare opportunity to play a massive and exciting game in our favourite genre!
How can I intern or work with Owlcat while being US based?
We regularly post job openings at our owlcat.games website. We are spread out across many countries, so it doesn't really matter where you are located.
Does Arueshalae need to take care of her wings and are they soft to touch?
Any winged species needs to take good care of their wing hygiene! The feel of her wings is better left to your imagination.
(I imagine they're like bat wings. So the skin is the texture of your hand with a thin membrane between the bones).
A lot of people throw around hearsay about how Owlcat hates PF2 as a system and will never make another pathfinder game because they're 1e grogs, which you've never said anything about. What are the dev team's actual opinions on the edition changeover, and are there any particular favorite adventures from after PF2e?
It is not true. This rumour has been circulating for a while, and we are quite puzzled about its origins.
Both editions have their respective charm and we don't really have any decision set in stone. As for picking a favourite PF2E AP, will it be too biased to name Kingmaker?
I'm still surprised that Kingmaker and WotR were your two first games as Owlcat. What made you guys decide to tackle Pathfinder as well as make two (now three) of your first games utterly enormous experiences?
The studio was founded by a group of veterans of the industry, who worked on games such as Skyforge, Allods Online, Silent Storm and Heroes of Might and Magic V. A quite solid basement!
We wanted to make a game of our dreams. Pathfinder was loved and regularly played by the majority of the team those days (and largely still is!), and folks at Paizo were absolutely amazing. So it was a natural choice.
(HoMM 5 would be people from Nival Interactive. Most of the initial dev team and current core staff of Owlcat are those russian developers from the early 2000s).
What was the overall public reception to the turn-based-only gameplay of RT? Do you guys feel that this reception has influenced what you are currently working on/will be working on in the future? As in, could we expect another TB-only game or back to hybrid like WotR was.
Mostly seamless. TB seems to be generally more popular than RtwP (about 70% vs 30%, according to the surveys), and since RT was designed with TB in mind (unlike PF which was balanced around RtwP), complaints were minimal. It doesn't mean we're forever done with RtwP - we may come back to a hybrid system if it's relevant for a given project.
The DLC structure for WotR and RT are different. Where the former has several small chunks and standalone experiences, the latter has, as of now, a more encompassing singular DLC that has more of a presence throughout the game. What has been the reception to this so far? If positive, would you guys prefer going this route for further DLC?
It was more of an evolution rather than a different structure. By the end of Season Pass 1 in PF2, we had a much better idea what people wanted from our expansions. Up to the point where based on community feedback, we decided to replace the initial concept of DLC6 (which was supposed to be a set of different arenas where you could design your own encounters) with what you know as A Dance of Masks, a heavily narrative-driven and companion-focused DLC.
DLCs for Rogue Trader were designed from the get go with this knowledge in mind, so we focused on integrated, story-rich experience that expands the main campaign, rather than side content.
That worked extremely well so far, so while this doesn't mean we'll be doing EXCLUSIVELY this kind of DLCs from now on, this is our new default 'go to' approach.
Would be really great to have some cross save support between platforms, Xbox Play Anywhere or your own solution, like in BG3, Cyberpunk etc. Or at least being able to play on xCloud (so I could access my Xbox save file on PC this way). Do you have any plans to support any of the above?
We're considering such options, yes. Nothing specific to share yet though.
Favorite fan-artist from the community?
We have so many great artists at our community and we don't want anyone to feel bad for not being mentioned, so we'll simply say that we LOVE what all of you guys are doing!
Biggest dang-it (ie bug, screw up, missing feature, unrecognized opportunity, etc; something that makes you say “dang it”) from each game?
There was a funny annoying bug that kept pursuiting us ever since Kingmaker. A huge crossbow that kept appearing in random places on the screen. Started from hanging in the air in Kingmaker, then began popping up across the main menu in Wrath. It was very tough to figure out why it was coming back all the time.
Latest occurence was dated around DLC5, and deep inside our hearts, we still fear to see it showing up again. Given that Rogue Trader still has some of the old legacy code bits from Pathfinder, we know that even in the grim darkness of the far future, it may one day find us...
As for Rogue Trader... Probably the infamous Cassia/Yrliet jaw problem? Every time we saw a yet another 800+ vote meme about it on Reddit, it was an "Oh god not again -.-" moment every time.
(Habsburg Jaw)
How about the biggest hat pick (ie clever bit of design, unforeseen boon, something accidental that made another feature easier to implement, etc)?
Definitely the memetic "High momentum". That was recorded for some early pre-alpha testing purposes in like 5 minutes, and made it all the way through to release. Also, the popularity of Abelard and his introductions absolutely surpassed all expectations. Would you like to be introduced, Lord Captain?
Plans for having companions “romance” each other in Rogue Trader (ie having companions naturally develop relationships with or without player involvement)?
There are already some hints in the Epilogues about a few characters. You may notice if you look intently.
(Vigdis and Idira, but can't let Geedubs see it explicit).
Are we gonna get more guns in upcoming Rogue Trader DLCs?
Typically we always add new items with every DLC, so yes!
Is there anything specific you wanted to see?
Any chance of a Horus Heresy/30k era game?
We haven't discussed or considered that.
Can we get the OSTs/soundtracks separately from the games yet? I need my Wrath of the Righteous soundtrack fix!
The soundtracks are already available on multiple music streaming services, including the recent original song for Pathfinder by Skar Productions.
Companion from each game that was an absolute nightmare to write a story for?
Nothing so extreme comes to mind.
Is there any chance you could say whether the upcoming Rogue Trader DLC will introduce a new male romance option that can be romanced by male Rogue Traders?
Yes! Such option is coming in Lex Imperialis - the new Arbites companion romance will be available for any gender.
(Lots of questions on romance).
Are there any plans to improve heretic run for Rogue trader?
Can't promise a major overhaul, but we agree that it could use more polish. We have comprehensive data from community about problematic spots, and hope to address at least some of these concerns over time in future updates.
What's owlcat's policy on ai generated content?
All art you see in our games is carefully handcrafted by our artists. We don't have any plans to use ai-generated art.
(What about textures though?)
Hello, why did you abandon the radical/puritan system?
It is a minor feature that never made it beyond a tracker that shows your Conviction progress.
Why didn't the path of chaos work out well and why aren't there any choices for chaos gods other than Tzeentch?
Heretical conviction is more Chaos Undivided rather than Tzeench. We'd like to update some elements of the path, hopefully eventually we'll have the chance to.
In hindsight now that Rogue Trader and the first dlc have been out for a while and people have shown what parts of the game they like most, is there something that you can talk about that you would have done differently if you could go back? Like having a companion/companions show up sooner or later than they do now for example.
Overall we're happy with how the game and companions turned out. With infinitely more time and budget, each of them could be made better, of course, but we have to be realistic. There are still some spots we'd like to tweak or improve in future updates, such as for example some battles that are less engaging than others.
What do you guys see as the next vector/area for improvement in your games? (Graphical fidelity and VO are the 2 things I’m sure you see brought up the most but that would extend dev time.)
These two are good directions. Also better pacing (less uninteresting filler fights, less difficulty spikes, more even density of content), more reactivity. Probably going a bit wider than taller (e.g. 20-30% shorter but with more branching options for every part).
(I think the graphics and voice options are in a good place for a game like Rogue Trader. I think more reactivity and sidequests should be bumped up ahead of any major systems changes).
Do you plan to adapt the system as it is presented in the rulebook for the next project set in the Warhammer 40k universe, say, for Dark Heresy, if such a project comes to life?
We'd probably use an approach similar to the one used in Rogue Trader if we were looking at doing more CRPGs based on similar rulesets.
Will there be another WH40K CRPG? Dark Heresy, Black Crusade, Only War?
If we would be making another CRPG in 40k universe, these all definitely sound like they'd have a great potential.
We have a number of reveals planned for this year, where we will tell you guys what to expect next. Stay tuned!
Would owlcat ever make a Shadowrun crpg?
The setting is awesome and there are people in the team who'd be really excited to work on it, should an opportunity arise. It's not among the games we're currently developing, though.
(Harebrained would be open to giving them a shot with the license I think).
Will owlcat make a CRPG in their own original IP like Larian has done with Divinity?
Which developer doesn't dream about their own franchise? Of course eventually we hope to! It's not on the horizon just yet though.
Will we ever get a starfinder game?
We like the idea about a game in a space setting, but we aren't developing any Starfinder games right now.
Will Rogue Trader be supported with content updates for the same length of time as WOTR was? WOTR has A LOT of content and I would love to see Roguetrader get similar amounts of content because we dont have many Sci Fi CRPGs.
Hopefully! WotR was supported for so long because you guys remained so invested for all these years, playing it, discussing it, and making content for it. As long as the attention to the game remains high, the DLC sales are good enough, and there's enough people on the development team willing to work on the game (and who are not desperately needed elsewhere), it's always worth to continue updating the game.
Can we look forward to more owlcat CRPGs in licensed IPs?
Absolutely.
Does owlcat prefer sci-fi crpgs like wh40k or traditional fantasy like pathfinder?
Both sci-fi and fantasy have their charm. We don't want to limit ourselves by sticking to only one of them. Besides, it's good to be able to switch from one to another to keep the enthusiasm up.
Any plans for Pathfinder 3? Will Owlcat ever return to Pathfinder? If it happens, will it be PF2e?
We love Pathfinder and remain in touch with our friends at Paizo, so we keep the idea in mind. But currently all teams in the studio are occupied with other projects. In regards to an edition, nothing is set in stone, but we'd certainly be open to explore PF2E as an option.
When will your new games be announced? What to expect next? Will they also be CRPGs? Which settings will they be based in?
We plan a number of exciting reveals this year. Stay tuned!
Kingmaker, Wrath of the Righteous, and Rogue Trader all have your player character in positions of power that give them large amounts of freedom in the worlds they reside in. Will the trend of politically powerful protagonists continue in your future titles? Will there be further systems similar to mythic paths?
Generally, we like it when a player has an agency to influence the world around them, as it allows for a deeper story. Implementation and scale may vary, though. It already varies even between our existing games - for example, Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous are often said to feel different in that regard.
What are some of the game design lessons the team has learned from Pathfinder : Kingmaker, Wrath of the Righteous and Warhammer 40k : Rogue Trader? Can you elaborate?
Answered by our Game Designer Inanky:
It’s a super complex question: as they are both numerous and very different from each other, depending on the game. While during the development of Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous we were mostly adopting a pre-existing role-playing system as close as possible, during the development of Warhammer40k: Rogue Trader we were mostly doing everything from scratch while trying to preserve the general vibe and most terms from the Fantasy Flight Game TTRPG system
Also, for many developers Kingmaker was the first experience in this genre, or even in game development in general, so many of us basically learned how to make RPGs in general.
We also learned a super important lesson: being passionate about a project is totally felt through the final game. Even though there we had lots of problems - our players still played and loved the game.
I guess, after the release of Rogue Trader we learned another important lesson that is, while obvious, difficult to internalize: players will make much, MUCH more broken builds than you could ever imagine.
Yes, it IS obvious. And yes, it’s still an eye-opening experience each time it happens.
I could go into details: about our leveling system, about encounter design, about item design etc. But I, honestly, don’t think that is super important in and of itself.
It’s much more important to develop general experience and vision.
Were there any companions/other important characters for Rogue Trader who were ultimately scrapped for the final version of the game?
There were once thoughts for a couple more lategame companions for Heretical conviction. A Slaanesh Daemonette and a heretic cultist witch. But they didn't fit into the scope and narrative of the story, and were entirely scrapped early in development.
(
)Nocturne of Oblivion also had a certain chance to become a companion, but as his personality shaped up, we realised that he felt much more natural as an enigmatic NPC instead.
Will there be romances in your next games?
Of course!
Has Rogue Trader and the DLC sold as expected?
We're in a good spot! Void Shadows was very well-received, and the game has recently crossed the line of 1 million copies sold.
Are there any particular franchises that you're dreaming of working on? If you guys theoretically did have the desire and money to make a game in another sci fi or fantasy setting besides Warhammer 40k or Pathfinder, what setting or IP would you choose?
There's so many of them out there and so hard to choose from! Especially when your team consists of gamers who are fans of a wild variety of different settings.
If you look at our internal list of potential options, you will see nearly everything you can think of. Except maybe the franchises that are known to never be licensed (and even with that, we keep our eye open, because who knows!). But to actually make a game based on a franchise requires multiple factors:
1) There must be a group of skilled professionals inside the studio, who are really enthusiastic about that franchise and ready to become the driving core behind its development.
2) There must be enough people to assemble the full team or at least an opportunity to hire more people.
3) The franchise needs to be popular enough or have a good growth potential. Or simply excite the team beyond comprehension, that also works.
4) Realistic opportunities must exist to obtain the license for that franchise with reasonable terms.
Could you tell us who wrote which companions in Rogue Trader?
If the author wants, they may reveal themselves. By default we prefer to not disclose this information, as there have been cases in the past where it attracted uncomfortable attention to the writers.
Will there be more DLCs for Rogue Trader, besides those already announced?
It isn't 100% set in stone yet, but we do have ideas and plans that we're currently assessing and discussing. The recent DLC of your dreams survey will definitely be helpful.
Are there any plans regarding the ship size in Rogue Trader? Please let us get our hands on a cruiser
It would require a major overhaul of the system. Switching ships was considered at some point during early development, but never went beyond initial ideas. At the moment, the game is not built with it in mind.
Revisiting this certainly crossed our minds, and we know that the players want it, but it may be too much of a technical and narrative challenge to overcome with reasonable resource investments.
We'll see if an opportunity ever arises in future.
Will we ever get an Xbox Series X texture/resolution upgrade for Wrath of the Righteous in the way that PS5 got an upgrade? After Kingmaker was abandoned (I've read and understand why) and now we have the only unoptimized 9th gen console version of WOTR, it does feel bad to be a Owlcat fan on Xbox.
That's a complicated one! :/
PF2 is a massive technical challenge to optimize for consoles. When we assessed the possibility of an upgrade to 9th gen for Xbox, we've ran into having to switch the whole project to newer versions of Unity libraries. Unfortunately that exploded the game in erratic and unpredictable ways, to a point where we realised that fixing all of it would potentially paralyze any other work on the project for -months-. Between DLCs being still in development at that point, and the relatively small size of the game team, we were forced to choose the lesser evil and freeze development of this upgrade. Unfortunately we never really had the opportunity or resources to get back to it so far
We are really sorry for letting the Xbox players down like that. This was a major learning point for us, which made us implement significant improvements to the process for console version development in Rogue Trader, which doesn't have any such issues.
In the future, will you switch to a different game engine, such as Unreal Engine, instead of Unity?
We are already developing at least one project with Unreal Engine, but we wouldn't want our giant expertise in Unity to be wasted. Most likely we'll continue using both, for different projects.
Can we get a hint of what kind of massive side activities (Kingdom/Crusade/Ship management) will be in the next Owlcat title?
Do you enjoy searching for answers?
Will you ever make a Warhammer Fantasy / Old World RPG?
Sounds exciting, but our priorities are elsewhere at the moment. We aren't developing any game in that setting right now.
In a process of developing Rogue Trader, how exactly did collaboration with Games Workshop go? What is their opinion on Rogue Trader now, when the game showed success and gained love from the WH40K community? Did you get feedback from them already? Is there a possibility Rogue Trader' events will be once considered canon?
They are really happy with how the game turned out. We work closely with them all the time, exchanging feedback and opinions.
Considering the events canon would be hard since there are so many different endings depending on player's decisions. You can always consider your outcome canon for yourself though!
(Of course they'd say this, even after GeeDubs rushed them to launch the game).
Is there a final release date yet for Lex Imperialis? Any information you can give us on content as a sneak peek/preview?
Not yet, but currently scheduled for late Spring release, with more information coming closer to the date.
...Do you like dogs?
What are the odds we get something Age of Sigmar related? The Mortal Realms always struck me as better "video game" material than WHFRP.
It's a great setting, but it is not among the list of currently developed projects or plans for the near future.
Do you plan to focus on cRPGs exclusively or are you branching out to other genres? If the answer is yes, to which?
We do plan to experiment with neighbouring genres. In fact, we are already doing so with some of our future projects. They will still be true to the "narrative-driven with complex mechanics" formula though.
Also don't worry, we are not moving away from traditional isometric cRPGs either. Development of the next game in this genre with design philosophy familiar to the 3 previous games, is already in progress.
Yrliet hug dlc and argenta date when? What about RT's and Pasqal's marriage?
Heresy!
Will you continue to support end user mods in your PC releases? The Owlcat games would benefit a lot from enabling the community create custom content like we can do in Neverwinter Nights. That has been a dream of mine for a long time. Does the studio ever intend to do something like that?
Of course. There's already a plenty of mods for all our games available online.
We have provided additional mod tools for Rogue Trader, but we aren't really yet where we'd like to be with mod support, and would like to expand it in future.
Would you consider developing your own mechanics system for the next game, one that prioritizes ease of use and is specifically designed for computer gaming, rather than attempting to adapt a Pen and Paper system to the computer medium?
If there's an existing system for the setting we're using, it often makes sense to adapt one.
If there isn't - we'd have no choice but to invent our own!
How has the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 impacted your plans, your understanding of the market, and your position within it?
It didn't trigger a massive flock of new players, but it definitely increased the awareness of the genre. It has also set new, higher standards, though.
Overall, it didn't affect our creative plans too much. We were interested in making a big and expensive game long before BG3 had its success, and we're slowly increasing scope and production value from project to project similar to what Larian did.
I know that Shadow of the Road is coming in the future, and that you've talked about moving to Unreal Engine as part of your future releases. I suppose that leads to the obvious question: are you building Shadow of the Road in Unity or UE? The trailers look like Unity, but I figure it's worth asking.
It's built with Unity. Note that it's developed by Another Angle Games, and while we assist with various aspects, we are the publishers, not the developers of the game.
As for Owlcat, we aren't exactly moving fully to Unreal Engine either. More like, building a separate internal team for projects in that engine.
Is there an Owlcat "dream project"? Something the whole studio wants the chance to do as a magnum opus?
Each our project is our dream project! We don't work with something we aren't excited with.
Are there any projects out there that got concepted/fleshed out but weren't able to be realized? Obviously you always have features or ideas that get cut from existing games you'd want to add, but I'm more angling for like..."we had this awesome idea for XYZ game but couldn't get the license/couldn't make it happen from a budget or production standpoint?"
Not during the existenсe of Owlcat itself. Within realistic boundaries we were always able to work on what we love.
Do you think the Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous DLCs were successful? How are you approaching DLC development now compared to the last game?
The most successfull ones were The Last Sarkorians and A Dance of Masks. What we definitely figured out is that the players enjoy when the DLC contains a bit of content for every type of player (not just a single category like mechanics), when it's deep on narrative, and when it's integrated into the game rather than offering a side story.
...Also that making the first DLC so heavily reliant on puzzles was probably not a very good idea.
Is there even the slightest chance that you will add jump packs to the game?
We discussed this, but there are a lot of technical complications.
Not only the maps are not big enough for this, but with the way the level geometry currently works in the game, all holes and chasms are effectively impassable for all units.
A jump pack character would either have to move around them, which would look odd, or ALL locations in the game would have to be reassembled with jump packs in mind, which is an ocean of work and a toll on performance.
Still, we are really fond of the idea itself, so it isn't completely impossible we'll eventually find a solution of some sort.
Are you planning to expand cut scenes for existing romances in the game?
It looks like something we might consider, but we don't have any specific plans at the moment.
Will new portraits be added to RT?
There will be new portraits in Lex Imperials, yes.
Will there be more portraits for Wrath of the Righteous?
Development for Wrath of the Righteous is largely finished, so no. There's a plenty of fan made portrait packs though. We recommend taking a look online.
What casting process do you go through with the voice actors? Are the auditions submitted to agency’s?
We work through the agencies, yes.
Will future Rogue Trader DLC's expand the star map? Would love to see new systems to explore.
Yes, there will be new star systems. Namely, Lex Imperialis will have a few.
What's your favourite quest in a) Any Owlcat game and b) Any non-Owlcat game.
There's a good few hundreds of opinions on this subject, depending on the member of the team!
CM Starrok has taken the liberty to answer this one, and his favourite quest was saving Targona and healing her wing as an Angel in Wrath of the Righteous - that was so morally satisfying! For a non-owlcat game, that'd probably be the hag's storyline in Baldur's Gate 3, it was creepy to perfection.
Could you go into more details about RT development, in case of stuff being thought about, bare minimum implementation and being cut durring development like Sentinel Pride, CSM terminators etc.
Both the terminators and the missing segment of Santiel's Pride were cut due to the impossibility to realistically finish them in time with existing resources, as often happens with these things. Unfortunately, these sad moments are inevitable for any creative process.
Sometimes half-baked content like this makes a return in future updates and DLCs. While we can't promise anything specific, we have the history of coming back to similar things before.
(Sentinel's Pride is that Chorda frozen world in Act 4, highly detailed, no quest apart from Mazarai's personal one).
In alpha version of RT, overall game balance and system was more closer to TT version, stuff like righteous fury (crit in later version), psyker powers not being limited to staves, armor value and overall numbers being lower. What was reason for changing it to more homebrewed system that ended up being far more problematic and still persists in form of dlc 1 classes and items (executioner and chainsaws being prime suspects)
Answered by our Game Designer Inanky: Alpha version of Rogue Trader was a much more focused experience, consisting of a small part of the overall game. It allowed to test different things, some of which actually worked well, some of which worked seemingly well.
The problem is, when you try to scale those things and decisions to the whole game - lots of cracks show up.
Some of the systems just didn’t work for a 80+ hour experience.
Some of the systems, while scaled, didn’t give the overall feeling of the space power fantasy of Warhammer40k.
Some of the systems, while scaled, turned out just, well, bad.
And that’s the reality of game development - you can learn that some things just don’t work much later into development, and you have to change a lot of stuff.
Yes, some of the decisions were probably wrong, but they were all made for reasons, important ones at that. It’s not like we just one day decided to change everything for worse (god no, nobody likes to change anything, it’s SO MUCH work)!
Is there any plans to update Ulfar's gear options? He is considerably weaker than all the other companions especially since the Xenos allies got access to most of the normal gearing.
Yes, we see a lot of community feedback on this. We're currently reviewing his (and Uralon's) itemization, build and usability in the party, no specific dates when it'll be coming yet though.
I absolutely love the complexity of your games and the way the difficulty can be perfectly customized for a real challenge. However, in Rogue Trader, the progression sometimes felt a bit overwhelming. Are there any plans to make progression in your next games a bit more user-friendly, especially for newcomers?
We feel we've improved in this aspect since Pathfinder, as apparently Rogue Trader is considered easier to comprehend.
But there are some features that we feel could improve the experience. UI and tutorials could use some polish. We also still want to add automatic leveling. That could be useful for quickly putting a shelved companion back in action, returning to the game after a break, or simply when the player is interested in the story rather than mechanics.
Are there any companions or any other major characters in any of your games that were decided to be added at the (almost) last moment, and were not originally planned as part of the story? Or was everything thought out in advance?
Not really. Companions are always among the first things to be planned during development. We often know their general outline long before the story takes its final shape.
What was in the box the Nocturne of Oblivion gifted RT with?
To hope to see a different close of fate,
To don their dreams and think themselves reforged,
The lot it is of wishers and the doomed.
This trove of tears for futures still unplayed
May open yet and welcome them. Alas,
The curtain's far from sewn, no board is laid.
My simple question is why were no additional “races “with new companions varieties added in wrath of righteous when there’s so many varieties of classes.
Races and companions are by a margin more expensive to add than classes. They require a whole new set of models, customization options, animations, item visuals scaling, narrative integration into the world and more. It's not impossible within a scope of a DLC (we've added Tieflings in Kingmaker before), but it leaves little room for anything else in that DLC.
Besides, we simply did have other ideas for the set of DLCs in Wrath of the Righteous. Looking back, adding a new race would have probably been received better than some of the content of the DLCs we released, but unfortunately we don't have a spare Aeon in the studio to turn back time.
As an avid player of the trpg I had hoped to see more of the creatures and dangers local to the Koronus expanse, and was a little disappointed to see how comparatively little we saw of the Yu’vath, the Egarians or the Orcs of ‘Undred ‘Undred Teef. So I’m kinda curious to know why you didn’t include them.
There's only so much you can include within a game. Rogue Trader is already a very large game and already covers a big chunk of the setting's races and factions, giving a nod even to some of the less known Koronus-specific races. Remember the planet with the laser beam puzzle? That's Khrave ruins.
We might expand the options in future DLCs, however.
After developing 3 amazing games, what do you think is the biggest lesson the team has learned while developing each game ?
Make the games you are yourself excited with, and be honest with yourself and your audience.
(This right here is a healthy developer mindset).
What aspect of each game did you think was the most fun and what aspect did you think did not turn out as well as the team hoped?
Each of the developers would probably name their own aspects.
The only thing that the devs would probably universally agree about, is that the Crusade in Wrath of the Righteous didn't turn out as good as we'd hope it would be. It received multiple waves of improvements to make it better, but if we had a spare Aeon, we'd probably design it differently.
Do you have any rough idea when Rogue Trader may be "complete" and finished with story DLC?
All our games are finished stories with a staggering amount of content, so we don't advice you to wait with playing them. You won't see everything even in multiple playthroughs anyway.
It's important to understand that we never intentionally design an even bigger game to later cut it into multiple pieces and sell them as DLCs. Our DLCs are additions, opportunities to expand the game with more ideas, mechanics and stories, many of which come to us long after the game was released. They are also an opportunity to address popular player wishes.We don't have any set in stone decision when we will be done with DLCs for Rogue Trader. It depends on the availibility of the team and on the financial viability - there needs to be a skilled team with enthusiasm to make them, and the game needs to still have enough audience to pay off development costs.
Any idea how difficult it would be to a) get a license for a Pathfinder 2e license and b) actually make a PF2E game that is pretty consistent with the tabletop rules?
Slightly more difficult than making a new PF1E game, simply because there's such a giant pile of mechanics to overhaul and update. Nothing impossible though.
Why do you guys seems to have a fondness for evil characters like daeran, regill, marazhai, wenduag, camellia, etc as companions? Or just comes as you write the main plot ?
We prefer to offer a wide variety of options for all playstyles and preferences. And we are happy that our evil characters always find their audience!
Do you play your Parhfinder games using turn-based combat, or real-time with pause? Which of the two systems do you prefer, as a player?
Each dev has their own views on this.
However, it seems to be more or less universally agreed across the community that the mix of RtwP for easier fights and TB for difficult fight is probably the optimal approach.
Will there be orks or tau in DLCs for RT?
There are certain narrative and mechanical challenges to resolve, but it's something to consider.
Will we eventually see full voice acting for Rogue Trader?
Unlikely, as this is a very expensive endeavour.
Is it true that Ember was originally envisioned as an actual child but had to be changed to a young adult with childlike characteristics at the last minute, due to censorship laws?
That's not true. Ember was always supposed to be a young woman with childlike mentality. Here's a true fact about her, though: originally her name was Cinder, but we already had Camellia (name as written starts with "C") and Seelah (name as pronounced starts with "S"), so we didn't want the players to get confused with more similar sounding names.
Will we ever kill Rasputin in a game?
Haven't really considered it.
Why is rogue trader more linear than wotr?
That's a debatable statement. The games have a similar amount of content. It could feel more linear for you because Wrath of the Righteous had more visually and narratively distinct Mythic Paths than RT has Convictions.
But it's important to understand that Wrath was a sequel. All basic gameplay elements were already in place since Kingmaker. Thanks to that, we had the opportunity to focus on going wider and more branched, while in RT everything had to be built from scratch.
Can we expect in the future the release of some Behind the Scenes of the voice actors of your games? I really enjoyed the small video you released on the Dance of Masks dlc showing some of the voice talent behind your games.
That is possible! We love to do these when we have the opportunity.
If you haven't yet, make sure to check out the interviews with the voice actors from the Rogue Trader cast on our Youtube channel, and the Christmas Special TTRPG event with them on Kormakrtv's channel.
Arueshalae, after completing her personal quest and being fully redeemed, becomes fully mortal? So is she now just a human/tiefling with horns, tail and wings? Or just a «mortal succubus»? Will she age in a physical sense since she talks about Phrasma’s judgment in the dialog at the end of Dance of the Masks?
Arueshalae, in her good ending, has committed quite a unique feat. There are no set rules for miracles, so, honestly, we don't know. As for Pharasma's judgement -- nobody escapes it, it has nothing to do with aging.
Will there be more Necron content in future DLCs? Currently, they appear way too late in the game and have way too little content. It feels like there is a lot of untapped potential, especially considering how cool their models and locations look.
It's a good direction to explore, but we don't have any specific plans yet.
Is Theodora's reflection we see near the end of the game the real Theodora from the past?
Some things best remain vague for the sake of the story. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. It's important what YOU think it was, for your character.
Would you reconsider your decision and add another season pass and with it DLC’s to Wrath of the Righteous?
Don't think so. The development for the game has been finished, and most of the team has moved on to the other projects at this point.
Both Daeron's and Camellia's romances were added because of a stretch goal for the kickstarter. It's hard to imagine the characters without a romance now, so were the characters radically changed to fit them now having a romance?
They haven't changed all that much. We already had the idea how to write them if the goal would be reached, and of course we were really happy to proceed with their stories (and romances) when we had the confirmation. We'd only have to come up with a non-romance option if the Kickstarter goal would have failed (and we'd have a lesser narrative budget as a result).
Were there any characters (both companions and npcs) that you wanted to give romances but couldn't implement for any reason?
A... Doesn't matter.
(A...rgenta. They really did want too but Geedubs stopped them).
I get the sense someone in your studio is a fan of the Eldar would I also be correct in that?
There are definitely a few!
I've noticed you guys don't like to have any randomness in your character creations, like no rolling for stats or anything, even when that's the standard mode of the ttrpg you are adapting. Any reason for this, and would any say ttrpg be an exception?
Answered by our Game Designer Inanky: I don’t think we ever seriously discussed this topic, probably because it felt pretty obvious.
While it may be fun to sit for 30 minutes clicking “Reroll stats”, waiting for the perfect combination of characteristics (and ultimately stopping at somewhat okayish cause you are so tired of clicking), it’s not the type of experience we want for our players.
We wanted them to actually make the character they want, not the character they rolled.
Plus, while being, actually, a minor point, it makes balancing everything a little bit easier.
Also, as a strictly personal reason: I hate random character creation, I freaking suck at rolling dice
"Are there plans to update basic animations of RT to be on par with DLC class, so far its like earth and heaven difference to how good blademaster feels compare to stiff warrior.
We thought of this, but after analysing the polls, it seems like you guys put animations rather low (if not last) on the list of priorities between other things you'd want to see improved.
Do you think we should reconsider that?
Can you please stop changing "that special heretic" sword from 2handed to 1handed and back so many times, its ruining my plans for builds...or at least maybe add more 2h swords so you can plan around using them?
Chaos is everchanging!
Why it feels like you as studio backtracking on the difficulty and complexity of your games? Every game(considering its only 3) feels easier than other, KM could punch you even on normal, while WotR's hard barely feels like normal, RT's Unfair is...pretty much a joke of a difficulty and nothing provides any challenge, dont want to sound offensive but i honestly got so much bored on consecutive runs of RT due to it(even if using meme builds), compare to Pathfinders, facerolling isn't fun.
Wrath might feel slightly easier because it fixed a few annoying elements from KM such as swarms, and offered an overpowered Mythic system. If exploited, it allows for new heights of build effectiveness.
Rogue Trader was a new system for us, so some fluctuations of complexity were unavoidable. All in all, this is more of a coincidence than an inherent directive to make each next game easier.
Either way, we do plan to continue looking at difficulty and balance in Rogue Trader as the time goes on. We will soon conduct player surveys related to this, so make sure to take part!
Any plans to add Voices to "secret companions" of RT and Nocturne?
There are no current plans to do so.
Can you share the lyrics on the Rogue Trader OST tracks that have vocals? Or at least a song or two. I remember reading how the Wrath of the Righteous main theme mentions Galfrey and such, and would love similar look into RT music. I would especially love to know what the lyrics on the Reaving Tempest track by Nikolay Filipovich say!
They don't contain any meaningful lyrics. Only imitate them.
Why do all your games got such a heavy empathis on redemption? Like both the idea that everyone deserves a second chance aswell as seeking salvation is a recurring theme on both Pathfinder games and even the rogue trader game
Swarm-that-walks looks at you with disappointment. And hunger.
I love the writing for Nok-Nok and the monstrous races. How do you go about writing their... not just "bad," but almost childish grammar? Do you start with a normal sentence, then convert it? Does someone on the team just have a knack for it?
The credit for Nok-Nok goes to Chris Avellone. And Paizo, who invented the goblin speech you see in some Adventure Paths. But we did write quite a few different monsters ourselves, too.
When you need to write a monster talking, you approach it from two sides. You come up with iconic words the race is going to use - such as longshanks, borba, etc. Then you write the phrases, using these iconic words and twisting the other words in a similar way.
(Chris Avellone reference. Mind you this was back in 2016, before he got Me Tooed. I know he helped with WOTR but I don't think he was involved with Rogue Trader).
Will we get a void battle focused DLC? E.g. standalone like Midnight Isles but for void battles and bigger fleets.
Reception for the space battles is noticeably better than for other side-systems in our previous games, so the idea to somehow expand or improve the space combat is hovering in the air.
Can't say if this will happen and how exactly, but we may consider it.
Hey Owlcats writing team, if you were to pick another Pathfinder AP to make into a game, what would you pick?
Answered by narrative designer Thainen: My dream Pathfinder game is Iron Gods. Unlikely to ever happen, but let me dream.
Owlcats Voice Acting directors and writers, who has been your fave actors to work with? And if you could get any Voice Actor who has worked on one of your games to voice act any thing strange but completely in character for the character, who would you pick and what would they say for you?
Our VA cast is beyond amazing. So much that it feels inappropriate to point out anyone specific. They've all been super involved in the process and are very happy to support the game after release. You may have seen a lot of them voicing the memes, chatting to the audience or coming to streams. We recommend checking out the recent stream with the actors on our youtube channel!
Have Owlcats been playing Pathfinder 2e? Tried the Starfinder 2e playtest?
At least one of our lead level designers is actively playing and GMing Pathfinder 2e (happens to be the same misanthrope who came up with Playful Darkness, by the way).
Some Owlcats are occasionally playing Pathfinder 2e as well. Starfinder 2e playtest wasn't played in-house, but we have a lot of people in the studio, so someone may be playing it with someone else than colleagues.
(That Fucker, Playful Darkness's AC is 94. Lantern King in Kingmaker is 54 and Areelu's AC is 67. And you meet him at the end of Act 3, before you get the power-spike of Act 4 +4 weapons, most people are probably still using +2).
Pathfinder has so many Iconics (the pregen characters to Society games); have you looked at them all? Got a favourite? Is there an Iconic that Owlcats are thinking about for your next Pathfinder AP, if there's going to be one?
Answered by narrative designer Thainen: Merisiel and Kyra, as a couple. Having them in the party together would open so many interesting possibilities!
As someone who has played all of the owlcat games in vanilla, one of the main issues I feel is apparent in all of the titles is that the tail end have been pretty weak, especially in Rogue Trader and Wrath due to the party taking a detour. If this is also a sentiment shared by the devs and writers, how would Owlcat try to approach the story structure for future projects?
We have seen the sentiment from some players that the density of content in our games seems to fall off by the final chapters. Severity of this problem is debatable, but we acknowledge its existence.
As in any creative process, things don't always go as planned, so by the end of development things sometimes get rushed to finish everything in time. This leads to some loose ends being cut.
While this issue is probably impossible to completely avoid, we've been optimizing our processes over time. We learn and improve. We also tend to come back to the problematic spots over time, boosting them with additional content in free updates or locating DLC content in less dense areas.
In an interview, I believe it was mentioned that BG3 has given Owlcat inspiration, what avenues would you guys want to improve upon and how would it be implemented?
BG3 was the most played non-Owlcat game both in 2023 and 2024 for the studio. It was inspiring in many ways, of course!
Not only because we had the chance to compare the approach and design, making notes on how we could improve our own creations. But also because it was a rare opportunity to play a massive and exciting game in our favourite genre!
How can I intern or work with Owlcat while being US based?
We regularly post job openings at our owlcat.games website. We are spread out across many countries, so it doesn't really matter where you are located.
Does Arueshalae need to take care of her wings and are they soft to touch?
Any winged species needs to take good care of their wing hygiene! The feel of her wings is better left to your imagination.
(I imagine they're like bat wings. So the skin is the texture of your hand with a thin membrane between the bones).
A lot of people throw around hearsay about how Owlcat hates PF2 as a system and will never make another pathfinder game because they're 1e grogs, which you've never said anything about. What are the dev team's actual opinions on the edition changeover, and are there any particular favorite adventures from after PF2e?
It is not true. This rumour has been circulating for a while, and we are quite puzzled about its origins.
Both editions have their respective charm and we don't really have any decision set in stone. As for picking a favourite PF2E AP, will it be too biased to name Kingmaker?
I'm still surprised that Kingmaker and WotR were your two first games as Owlcat. What made you guys decide to tackle Pathfinder as well as make two (now three) of your first games utterly enormous experiences?
The studio was founded by a group of veterans of the industry, who worked on games such as Skyforge, Allods Online, Silent Storm and Heroes of Might and Magic V. A quite solid basement!
We wanted to make a game of our dreams. Pathfinder was loved and regularly played by the majority of the team those days (and largely still is!), and folks at Paizo were absolutely amazing. So it was a natural choice.
(HoMM 5 would be people from Nival Interactive. Most of the initial dev team and current core staff of Owlcat are those russian developers from the early 2000s).
What was the overall public reception to the turn-based-only gameplay of RT? Do you guys feel that this reception has influenced what you are currently working on/will be working on in the future? As in, could we expect another TB-only game or back to hybrid like WotR was.
Mostly seamless. TB seems to be generally more popular than RtwP (about 70% vs 30%, according to the surveys), and since RT was designed with TB in mind (unlike PF which was balanced around RtwP), complaints were minimal. It doesn't mean we're forever done with RtwP - we may come back to a hybrid system if it's relevant for a given project.
The DLC structure for WotR and RT are different. Where the former has several small chunks and standalone experiences, the latter has, as of now, a more encompassing singular DLC that has more of a presence throughout the game. What has been the reception to this so far? If positive, would you guys prefer going this route for further DLC?
It was more of an evolution rather than a different structure. By the end of Season Pass 1 in PF2, we had a much better idea what people wanted from our expansions. Up to the point where based on community feedback, we decided to replace the initial concept of DLC6 (which was supposed to be a set of different arenas where you could design your own encounters) with what you know as A Dance of Masks, a heavily narrative-driven and companion-focused DLC.
DLCs for Rogue Trader were designed from the get go with this knowledge in mind, so we focused on integrated, story-rich experience that expands the main campaign, rather than side content.
That worked extremely well so far, so while this doesn't mean we'll be doing EXCLUSIVELY this kind of DLCs from now on, this is our new default 'go to' approach.
Would be really great to have some cross save support between platforms, Xbox Play Anywhere or your own solution, like in BG3, Cyberpunk etc. Or at least being able to play on xCloud (so I could access my Xbox save file on PC this way). Do you have any plans to support any of the above?
We're considering such options, yes. Nothing specific to share yet though.
Favorite fan-artist from the community?
We have so many great artists at our community and we don't want anyone to feel bad for not being mentioned, so we'll simply say that we LOVE what all of you guys are doing!
Biggest dang-it (ie bug, screw up, missing feature, unrecognized opportunity, etc; something that makes you say “dang it”) from each game?
There was a funny annoying bug that kept pursuiting us ever since Kingmaker. A huge crossbow that kept appearing in random places on the screen. Started from hanging in the air in Kingmaker, then began popping up across the main menu in Wrath. It was very tough to figure out why it was coming back all the time.
Latest occurence was dated around DLC5, and deep inside our hearts, we still fear to see it showing up again. Given that Rogue Trader still has some of the old legacy code bits from Pathfinder, we know that even in the grim darkness of the far future, it may one day find us...
As for Rogue Trader... Probably the infamous Cassia/Yrliet jaw problem? Every time we saw a yet another 800+ vote meme about it on Reddit, it was an "Oh god not again -.-" moment every time.
(Habsburg Jaw)
How about the biggest hat pick (ie clever bit of design, unforeseen boon, something accidental that made another feature easier to implement, etc)?
Definitely the memetic "High momentum". That was recorded for some early pre-alpha testing purposes in like 5 minutes, and made it all the way through to release. Also, the popularity of Abelard and his introductions absolutely surpassed all expectations. Would you like to be introduced, Lord Captain?
Plans for having companions “romance” each other in Rogue Trader (ie having companions naturally develop relationships with or without player involvement)?
There are already some hints in the Epilogues about a few characters. You may notice if you look intently.
(Vigdis and Idira, but can't let Geedubs see it explicit).
Are we gonna get more guns in upcoming Rogue Trader DLCs?
Typically we always add new items with every DLC, so yes!
Is there anything specific you wanted to see?
Any chance of a Horus Heresy/30k era game?
We haven't discussed or considered that.
Can we get the OSTs/soundtracks separately from the games yet? I need my Wrath of the Righteous soundtrack fix!
The soundtracks are already available on multiple music streaming services, including the recent original song for Pathfinder by Skar Productions.
Companion from each game that was an absolute nightmare to write a story for?
Nothing so extreme comes to mind.
Is there any chance you could say whether the upcoming Rogue Trader DLC will introduce a new male romance option that can be romanced by male Rogue Traders?
Yes! Such option is coming in Lex Imperialis - the new Arbites companion romance will be available for any gender.
(Lots of questions on romance).
Are there any plans to improve heretic run for Rogue trader?
Can't promise a major overhaul, but we agree that it could use more polish. We have comprehensive data from community about problematic spots, and hope to address at least some of these concerns over time in future updates.
What's owlcat's policy on ai generated content?
All art you see in our games is carefully handcrafted by our artists. We don't have any plans to use ai-generated art.
(What about textures though?)
Hello, why did you abandon the radical/puritan system?
It is a minor feature that never made it beyond a tracker that shows your Conviction progress.
Why didn't the path of chaos work out well and why aren't there any choices for chaos gods other than Tzeentch?
Heretical conviction is more Chaos Undivided rather than Tzeench. We'd like to update some elements of the path, hopefully eventually we'll have the chance to.
In hindsight now that Rogue Trader and the first dlc have been out for a while and people have shown what parts of the game they like most, is there something that you can talk about that you would have done differently if you could go back? Like having a companion/companions show up sooner or later than they do now for example.
Overall we're happy with how the game and companions turned out. With infinitely more time and budget, each of them could be made better, of course, but we have to be realistic. There are still some spots we'd like to tweak or improve in future updates, such as for example some battles that are less engaging than others.
What do you guys see as the next vector/area for improvement in your games? (Graphical fidelity and VO are the 2 things I’m sure you see brought up the most but that would extend dev time.)
These two are good directions. Also better pacing (less uninteresting filler fights, less difficulty spikes, more even density of content), more reactivity. Probably going a bit wider than taller (e.g. 20-30% shorter but with more branching options for every part).
(I think the graphics and voice options are in a good place for a game like Rogue Trader. I think more reactivity and sidequests should be bumped up ahead of any major systems changes).
Do you plan to adapt the system as it is presented in the rulebook for the next project set in the Warhammer 40k universe, say, for Dark Heresy, if such a project comes to life?
We'd probably use an approach similar to the one used in Rogue Trader if we were looking at doing more CRPGs based on similar rulesets.
TL;DR: They're being coy about the 4 projects they're working on. They have a workforce of 450 people now, working on one CRPG, one big RPG using Unreal like BG3 and two other genre projects. They're also a publisher now. They're allocating more resources to full voice acting and the big RPG will have full VO while that new CRPG will probably still be voice over/text in places.
WoD, Warcraft, Dark Heresy, Shadowrun, Starfinder were all brought up and casually sidestepped.
I've had to split my post as the interview is more than 64k characters.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2022
Will you consider creating a trilogy or series like Mass Effect to tell a longer story?
The reason why we don't do direct sequels (at least, haven't done so far), is that by the end of each our game, decision tree grows exponentially. At some point it becomes really difficult to maintain with so many different outcomes.
If you want to make a trilogy, you'd have to either dramatically reduce the impact of player decisions to the game's story, significantly reduce reactivity or select one of the possible route as 'canon', acting like all others never existed.
Given the abundance of options in our games, all of these options would leave a lot of players frustrated.
(This is true. You'd either have to railroad players or go off in so many tangents it's just not feesable for a story to be told the way you want it).
I am very happy about the idea of voicing more of the next game especially because I am dyslexic and it takes me an age and a half to read thou an entire game of yours. I am worried however about the use of AI in the next game for this goal. Can you confirm or deny use of AI to voice the next game?
We are working with an amazing cast of voice actors who will gift their voices to the characters. No AI involved
A question: you said you are currently developing 4 games so how many crpg are there from these 4 games and you said you are planning to release sci fi rpg does that mean there is another crpg from the remaining 3 and what kind of crpg is it if there is already a sci fi crpg ? Hope you'll answer me and thanks
We can confirm that traditional isometric cRPG genre is present in the list of the games we're currently making.
How many of them and in which setting - let's keep it a mystery for now! But if you love CRPGs, you certainly won't be disappointed.
(They really are working on 4 games. Remember, they have 450 people on staff now).
I've long believed that the best way to interpret Ember is as a philosophical pessimist. Someone who rejects hope, expects the worst to happen and finds great joy in being alive. Did her author set out to portray a philosophical pessimist and if so which philosopher was she based upon?
Thainen, the writer for Ember, answers:
She is indeed a pessimist, but one who has gone all the way through despair to find kindness at the other side. You can call her an "anti-nihilist", believing that in absence of hope we have nothing left but to take care of each other. Compared to real-world philosophies, she falls somewhere close to Existentialism. Of course I didn't write her starting with the thought "let's make her a little magic Jean-Paul Sartre", but "Existentialism Is a Humanism" has affected me as a person, which might have translated into the way I wrote her."
(That's an interesting way of looking at it).
Do you plan on adding patches to Wrath of the Righteous for new romance paths?
The game is largely finished, so no. You may want to check out some fan-made content though!
For example, there are mods for Woljif romance and alternative Camellia romance outcome, and we heard that Ranadiel from /r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker was almost done with his 5 new NPC romances mod.
(Adding romances to NPCs in WOTR, like the Camellia ending mod did. So far he's revealed Aranka (traveling Desna singer), Trendelev (Actually a Ravener having a schizo episode), Targona (Areelu lab angel experiment) and Nurah (The traitor).
Could there be an expansion to the Rogue Trader story, as in a theoretical Chapter 6 or adding more chapters in between, or will the DLC run parallel to the main story?
DLCs spread out across the game seem more favorable for the audience, but if we run out of space in the existing chapters, we may consider something like that. No current plans to do so though.
Would you ever consider collaborating with Larian Studios to make the greatest RPG known to man? Or any other devs for that matter?
We have a really warm relationship with Larian, know a number of great people from their studio and chat from time to time. But we both have our own artistic vision and make our dream projects they way we see them.
You can't make the greatest RPG known to man by simply tossing a handful of skilled people together anyway. You need well-built development pipelines, coordination and many other aspects that take years to establish.
Why wasn't the romance with Nenio added to the game, even though it won the vote?
Kitsune won, not an option of a romance with them
From the viewpoint of the character's author, she is not interested in romance. Science has her full attention. Nothing stops you from headcanoning her romance though.
How interested are you in returning to a fantasy setting in the foreseeable future, Pathfinder or not?
We certainly eventually will. A lot of people on the team enjoy fantasy.
Would owlcat be open to doing an rpg in space that isn’t warhammer?
Perhaps...
Why did y'all abandon Kingmaker on the console, leaving it in a nearly unplayable state, and remove the old forums where hundreds of people left questions begging for answers about it ever being looked at?
We developed the game while being a part of a larger publishing company, and after we went independent in 2019, the rights remained with the publisher.
Console version was released during the transfer period, and we did our best at supporting and fixing the game for as long as we could (we continued for a few months even after any revenue was cut off), but eventually further support became impossible.
Ever since those times, we don't receive any revenue from the game, don't have any control over what happens with it, and can't make any updates. Despite all efforts, any attempts to reclaim the rights were futile so far
We are really sorry, but there's little we can do about it.
Old forums were deleted because they largely became obsolete as most of our audience moved on to the other platforms.
(>Playing a CRPG on console. It's in the name 'Computer' Role Playing Game).
Is there any chance of making a World of Darkness Game?
The idea sounds exciting, but an opportunity must arise for that to happen.
Will you ever rework the existing origins in RT, not counting sactainioned psyker? Some like naval officer are quite bland and underpowered.
It is possible. We continue reviewing and improving existing content in major updates and DLCs. Admittedly, there are other things higher on priority list though.
Probably impossible but I hope you get to make a CRPG based on the Warcraft universe!
Sounds crazy cool, but will probably never happen.
(Not sure what you could do with this. Modern WoW sucks and you have Warcraft 3 for the good parts).
What is the probability of an intimate relationship between Yrliet and a Rogue Trader?
The Inqusition calls you. Accept or Accept?
(Show them the warrent).
Now that you're a publisher, are there any plans to reacquire the Pathfinder Kingmaker IP? A lot of people, myself included, still play it and it could still use some fixes/QOL improvements like fixing the rapier stance bug, adding camera rotation, implementing the ability to dismiss spells like in WOTR, etc. I think another big patch for the game would bring a lot of attention back to it again!
That would be great, but as we described in one of the questions above, the chances for that right now are... slim at best.
(Published by Deep Silver then to Knights Peak. Yeah, they're not getting that back).
What is the biggest hurdle to getting a Starfinder Game? And what do you need from the fanbase to make it happen?
Unfortunately we don't have a lot of people playing Starfinder in the team, so there isn't much enthusiastic drive at the moment. Maybe that'll change at some point.
What about genres of those 4 projects you are doing?
CRPG genre is present among them, and at least one of them is significantly higher in production value than our previous games. That's all we can share at the moment.
Your games all share the same style/vision/feel (something that happens for all studios, but especially for CRPGs in my opinion). How voluntary is this, and if relevant, how do you make sure it is ? You've said before you were looking into changing some of this "style" (with full voice acting for example). Are there other aspects you've considered to change, and which ?
Three games we have released are built on the same engine, with similar design philosophy, and by many of the same people. Some internal game systems are even built on top of bits of the same legacy code. You'd expect they'd have a number of similarities.
But as we grow in number, branch out towards neighbouring genres and try out new things, difference in visual aesthetics and design may vary wider, depending on the team and genre of the project.
A question that always annoy me, whenever I play Pathfinder WOTR : Why did you decide to remove Woljif from the party in Act 2 ? It's the only companion you ever loose control in such a fashion, you can do nothing to make him stay, and it's really annoying when he is part of your main lineup. So why?
It's pretty much a part of his story and character development. Think of it as his unique trait
A question about a "What if ?" Some times ago, during the Kickstarter Campaign, you let the community choose between Kitsune, Ratfolk or Catfolk for the last race add to the game. Kitsune won (alas), and we got Nenio as a Kitsune companion. But What If Ratfolks or Catfolks had won ? What would have happened to Nenio ?
You'd probably have someone completely different as your companion. Lady Konomi would probably also never happen.
Was Nocturne of Oblivion originally going to be a secret or temporary companion? What would he be like on the team as an ally, and maybe, daresay, hypothetically as a romance in Rogue Trader? I noticed while reading up some Aeldari stories that Harlequins are somewhere in-between the Asuryani and Drukhari regarding emotions
Never a romance, but yes, we've considered making him a late game companion during early stages of development. However, we quickly felt that his presence in a Rogue Trader's retinue would be stretching it uncomfortably too far from a power level point of view. The role of an enigmatic NPC that appears at key moments fit him much better.
(An Eldar exile in Yrliet would make sense for her to be in a retinue, a god damn Solitaire would not).
We kindly ask for OST vinyl reissue. Do you have plans for a vinyl reissue? Thank you!
Unfortunately, no such plans for any of our released games right now.
(Why?)
Is there any chance of seeing power fists in Rogue Trader?
It's a good DLC material. Not coming in Lex Imperialis though.
Are you still planning to improve/update the narrative for Rogue Trader? Not in DLCs but in the base game.
Every major update so far has added a few new dialogue options or updated some details of the existing dialogues. Probably won't be a major overhaul, but you can expect more tweaks in future.
Did you consider adding colony projects or quests to add enforcer NPCs to accompany you in battle in Rogue Trader?
We thought of it during development, but felt that adding more units would excessively clutter the battlefield and annoy the player.
You added turn-based mode to Kingmaker based on player feedback, is it possible to add real-time with pause combat to Rogue Trader in a similar fashion?
The combat system in RT is not designed with RtwP in mind. Grid, cover system, out-of-order turns, many ability effects - nothing of this would function with RtwP, so this would be a design challenge of epic proportions.
To be honest, there are better ways to spend development resources to improve the game than this.
Demand for RtwP isn't as high as it was for Turn-based in Kingmaker, either.
Don't you think you've changed your approach to romance themes from Octavia/Regongar, twins to more narrow down trope? A month earlier you mention that you approved Camellia Romance Expanded and Woljif Romance Mod. Keep in mind that there is an even bigger one that's coming. Does this mean that you are aware of the problem of lack of options for different tastes?
No matter how hard you try to maximize the amount of possible options, you can't cover them all. Everyone has their own taste.
But we're happy that our community contains people so creative that they're willing to share their own, expanded vision of our characters. It's always interesting to see how the fans envision these characters could develop.
(That's kind of a loaded question. Way to play it safe with the default fluff answer).
Is there a quota that you are always plan before pre production? For example: 1 character for a normie consumer, 1 character for a bad boy/girl consumer and 1 character with a twist(paid dlc)? From my consumer point of view, it is a pity that no powerhouse offers any kind of marriage for a stronger alliance. Do you ever consider these types of possibilities?
We don't have quotas or any other similarly strict approach. We simply look at the story and discuss which characters could fit, to ensure an engaging narrative and a variety of personalities so that more or less everyone can find something for themselves.
Is the new Adeptus Arbites companion going to be romanceable? Are they going to be male or a female companion? And if they are romanceable, are they going to be open for all genders (we surely miss out on mlm romance options in the game, and after Wrath it shows)?
Yes! Male, romanceable by any gender.
Have you considered making games like Icewind Dale 3 or Neverwinters Nights 3?
Sounds fun, but would require an opportunity. Not on the horizon right now.
Will Warhammer 40k : Rogue Trader have improved warp encounters on the ship more varied and challenging?
Might happen. Could fit within one of the larger updates or a DLC.
Any chance of more companions from existing characters in the game? For example Malice and Commissar?
Not impossible if we deem it appropriate. There are definitely some NPCs with such potential in the game.
Hey, i have a lore question for you! How many inquisitor are there in Coronus Expanse? How did Heinrix become a Lord-Inquisitor of the Expanse without his conclave? And if there is a Conclave, why they didn't offer a more excessive help to Lord Inquisitor?
[Redacted]
Where did the paradox arise that a rogue trader is under the influence of the demon Tzeentch, but at the same time is “friends” with representatives of any other gods, except brothers in faith?
The Word Bearers, who play a major role in the story, are not limited to Tzeench.
When is the Nenio romance patch for WotR coming out?
Ask your local modmakers!
(People like Nenio?)
Are you hiring?
Yes! You can always check our website, owlcat.games, for job openings.
How can I best support you guys as a fan of your work?
Leave a review about our game on Steam, or simply come by and chat in our amazing community on any of the platforms!
Is there any way I can get some creative feedback or opinions on my companion suggestions from a few months back? I know they won't make it in the game, but it'd be fun to see what you guys think of some of them or if there's a favorite.
Hello! We receive a lot of suggestions almost daily, and unfortunately it's physically impossible to answer each of them - we'd have to completely halt the development to do so! We are really grateful for community input though, and there have been cases where it was really helpful for the development.
Will there ever be voiceover in other languages than English in your games? Russian, for example.
Voiceover is very expensive. We're only trying to move towards full English voiceover for the first time now, so any other languages are currently out of the question.
For your upcoming games, do you plan on continuing to rely on your paid customers for your QA after releasing a (barely) MVP? Lest we forget, RT released riddled with game breaking bugs where many players couldn’t even progress through the game and just quit.
It's absolutely fair to be bitter and frustrated about the game's technical quality at release. Frankly, we were frustrated ourselves, not expecting so many issues to slip through. For that we sincerely apologize.
We did our best at delivering the fixes as soon as possible, working closely with the community to set priorities. We have also made a lot of alterations and improvements to our internal processes since then, which resulted in largely flawless launch of the first DLC, Void Shadows. We hope that the renewed approach will help us prevent any issues of such scale in future.
Thank you for being with us even after our mistakes!
(The safe answer. Not blaming Geedubs at all).
Is there any plan on improving your future character talent UI in RT? Like using an easy to read tree that branches out or something less time consuming instead of that long list?
We've made a number of improvements to the level up UI since release, making it easier to read and navigate, and will probably add more in the following updates. We always welcome more feedback if you have any!
For me personally voice acting is a must. I saw on a thread, unless it was a misunderstanding, that moving forward we can expect full VA in future owlcat releases. Wotr having had its game of the year launch, looks like that ship has sailed, but if this is true are there any plans to update Rogue trader to this standard in the future or not?
Yes, we plan to move forward with full VO for the next projects, at least those we are developing, not publishing. As for Rogue Trader, the Lord Captain's voidship has unfortunately also already sailed, so currently there's no plan to update it with full VO.
(Why is it a must? I'd rather have more dialog if it's unvoiced than less if it is voiced).
Owlcat Games has a history of releases with accessibility features, such as colorblind mode. Why was that the first to be included and how do you choose which aspect of accessibility to include?
It happened to be the first problem we felt we could address. We hope to expand the list of options in the future.
Are there people with color blindness or other disabilities at Owlcat? If yes, how did their feedback help to improve the game?
Yes, there are people with color blindness in the team! Among the UI team actually, so they are checking that everything is well-visible.
(That's kinda nice. People implementing a feature that effects themselves).
Were any changes implemented into the game on request of people with disabilities?
A plenty. We've added varying font sizes, later increasing the maximum size even further, based on feedback. We've also made alterations to the coloring of the text in dialogue windows, and adjusted the warp route colors on the star map in Rogue Trader. Some annoying sounds were also made quieter on requests from people with misophonia.
Did you try to adapt the game in other ways? Perhaps add screen reading for people with sight problems?
Not yet, but it's something to consider.
Some people report that controller interface isn't convenient enough for some actions such as buffing. Will there be any improvements in this direction?
We can see how buffing at higher difficulty levels can be tedious in Wrath of the Righteous with controller. Unfortunately it's the nature of the system and there isn't much that can be done here. In Rogue Trader, the system is better optimized for playing with a controller.
Regardless, we always work on improvements, so if you have any ideas how you'd like controller support to be improved, we're always there to listen.
Your games are known for being extremely complex. You recently spoke about full voiceover plans, which is great for accessibility. But won't the variety of dialogues and amount of text suffer if you add full voiceover like in BG3? Wasn't there an "accessibility vs complexity" argument inside the team? Do you think accessibility may harm the game in some way?
In regards to CRPGs, we don't plan to significantly change our approach to dialogues to make them more suitable for voiceover, and plan to simply allocate more resources on it.
Other genres may have shorter dialogues where relevant.
-----------
Thank you for reading and see you in our worlds!
The reason why we don't do direct sequels (at least, haven't done so far), is that by the end of each our game, decision tree grows exponentially. At some point it becomes really difficult to maintain with so many different outcomes.
If you want to make a trilogy, you'd have to either dramatically reduce the impact of player decisions to the game's story, significantly reduce reactivity or select one of the possible route as 'canon', acting like all others never existed.
Given the abundance of options in our games, all of these options would leave a lot of players frustrated.
(This is true. You'd either have to railroad players or go off in so many tangents it's just not feesable for a story to be told the way you want it).
I am very happy about the idea of voicing more of the next game especially because I am dyslexic and it takes me an age and a half to read thou an entire game of yours. I am worried however about the use of AI in the next game for this goal. Can you confirm or deny use of AI to voice the next game?
We are working with an amazing cast of voice actors who will gift their voices to the characters. No AI involved
A question: you said you are currently developing 4 games so how many crpg are there from these 4 games and you said you are planning to release sci fi rpg does that mean there is another crpg from the remaining 3 and what kind of crpg is it if there is already a sci fi crpg ? Hope you'll answer me and thanks
We can confirm that traditional isometric cRPG genre is present in the list of the games we're currently making.
How many of them and in which setting - let's keep it a mystery for now! But if you love CRPGs, you certainly won't be disappointed.
(They really are working on 4 games. Remember, they have 450 people on staff now).
I've long believed that the best way to interpret Ember is as a philosophical pessimist. Someone who rejects hope, expects the worst to happen and finds great joy in being alive. Did her author set out to portray a philosophical pessimist and if so which philosopher was she based upon?
Thainen, the writer for Ember, answers:
She is indeed a pessimist, but one who has gone all the way through despair to find kindness at the other side. You can call her an "anti-nihilist", believing that in absence of hope we have nothing left but to take care of each other. Compared to real-world philosophies, she falls somewhere close to Existentialism. Of course I didn't write her starting with the thought "let's make her a little magic Jean-Paul Sartre", but "Existentialism Is a Humanism" has affected me as a person, which might have translated into the way I wrote her."
(That's an interesting way of looking at it).
Do you plan on adding patches to Wrath of the Righteous for new romance paths?
The game is largely finished, so no. You may want to check out some fan-made content though!
For example, there are mods for Woljif romance and alternative Camellia romance outcome, and we heard that Ranadiel from /r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker was almost done with his 5 new NPC romances mod.
(Adding romances to NPCs in WOTR, like the Camellia ending mod did. So far he's revealed Aranka (traveling Desna singer), Trendelev (Actually a Ravener having a schizo episode), Targona (Areelu lab angel experiment) and Nurah (The traitor).
Could there be an expansion to the Rogue Trader story, as in a theoretical Chapter 6 or adding more chapters in between, or will the DLC run parallel to the main story?
DLCs spread out across the game seem more favorable for the audience, but if we run out of space in the existing chapters, we may consider something like that. No current plans to do so though.
Would you ever consider collaborating with Larian Studios to make the greatest RPG known to man? Or any other devs for that matter?
We have a really warm relationship with Larian, know a number of great people from their studio and chat from time to time. But we both have our own artistic vision and make our dream projects they way we see them.
You can't make the greatest RPG known to man by simply tossing a handful of skilled people together anyway. You need well-built development pipelines, coordination and many other aspects that take years to establish.
Why wasn't the romance with Nenio added to the game, even though it won the vote?
Kitsune won, not an option of a romance with them
From the viewpoint of the character's author, she is not interested in romance. Science has her full attention. Nothing stops you from headcanoning her romance though.
How interested are you in returning to a fantasy setting in the foreseeable future, Pathfinder or not?
We certainly eventually will. A lot of people on the team enjoy fantasy.
Would owlcat be open to doing an rpg in space that isn’t warhammer?
Perhaps...
Why did y'all abandon Kingmaker on the console, leaving it in a nearly unplayable state, and remove the old forums where hundreds of people left questions begging for answers about it ever being looked at?
We developed the game while being a part of a larger publishing company, and after we went independent in 2019, the rights remained with the publisher.
Console version was released during the transfer period, and we did our best at supporting and fixing the game for as long as we could (we continued for a few months even after any revenue was cut off), but eventually further support became impossible.
Ever since those times, we don't receive any revenue from the game, don't have any control over what happens with it, and can't make any updates. Despite all efforts, any attempts to reclaim the rights were futile so far
We are really sorry, but there's little we can do about it.
Old forums were deleted because they largely became obsolete as most of our audience moved on to the other platforms.
(>Playing a CRPG on console. It's in the name 'Computer' Role Playing Game).
Is there any chance of making a World of Darkness Game?
The idea sounds exciting, but an opportunity must arise for that to happen.
Will you ever rework the existing origins in RT, not counting sactainioned psyker? Some like naval officer are quite bland and underpowered.
It is possible. We continue reviewing and improving existing content in major updates and DLCs. Admittedly, there are other things higher on priority list though.
Probably impossible but I hope you get to make a CRPG based on the Warcraft universe!
Sounds crazy cool, but will probably never happen.
(Not sure what you could do with this. Modern WoW sucks and you have Warcraft 3 for the good parts).
What is the probability of an intimate relationship between Yrliet and a Rogue Trader?
The Inqusition calls you. Accept or Accept?
(Show them the warrent).
Now that you're a publisher, are there any plans to reacquire the Pathfinder Kingmaker IP? A lot of people, myself included, still play it and it could still use some fixes/QOL improvements like fixing the rapier stance bug, adding camera rotation, implementing the ability to dismiss spells like in WOTR, etc. I think another big patch for the game would bring a lot of attention back to it again!
That would be great, but as we described in one of the questions above, the chances for that right now are... slim at best.
(Published by Deep Silver then to Knights Peak. Yeah, they're not getting that back).
What is the biggest hurdle to getting a Starfinder Game? And what do you need from the fanbase to make it happen?
Unfortunately we don't have a lot of people playing Starfinder in the team, so there isn't much enthusiastic drive at the moment. Maybe that'll change at some point.
What about genres of those 4 projects you are doing?
CRPG genre is present among them, and at least one of them is significantly higher in production value than our previous games. That's all we can share at the moment.
Your games all share the same style/vision/feel (something that happens for all studios, but especially for CRPGs in my opinion). How voluntary is this, and if relevant, how do you make sure it is ? You've said before you were looking into changing some of this "style" (with full voice acting for example). Are there other aspects you've considered to change, and which ?
Three games we have released are built on the same engine, with similar design philosophy, and by many of the same people. Some internal game systems are even built on top of bits of the same legacy code. You'd expect they'd have a number of similarities.
But as we grow in number, branch out towards neighbouring genres and try out new things, difference in visual aesthetics and design may vary wider, depending on the team and genre of the project.
A question that always annoy me, whenever I play Pathfinder WOTR : Why did you decide to remove Woljif from the party in Act 2 ? It's the only companion you ever loose control in such a fashion, you can do nothing to make him stay, and it's really annoying when he is part of your main lineup. So why?
It's pretty much a part of his story and character development. Think of it as his unique trait
A question about a "What if ?" Some times ago, during the Kickstarter Campaign, you let the community choose between Kitsune, Ratfolk or Catfolk for the last race add to the game. Kitsune won (alas), and we got Nenio as a Kitsune companion. But What If Ratfolks or Catfolks had won ? What would have happened to Nenio ?
You'd probably have someone completely different as your companion. Lady Konomi would probably also never happen.
Was Nocturne of Oblivion originally going to be a secret or temporary companion? What would he be like on the team as an ally, and maybe, daresay, hypothetically as a romance in Rogue Trader? I noticed while reading up some Aeldari stories that Harlequins are somewhere in-between the Asuryani and Drukhari regarding emotions
Never a romance, but yes, we've considered making him a late game companion during early stages of development. However, we quickly felt that his presence in a Rogue Trader's retinue would be stretching it uncomfortably too far from a power level point of view. The role of an enigmatic NPC that appears at key moments fit him much better.
(An Eldar exile in Yrliet would make sense for her to be in a retinue, a god damn Solitaire would not).
We kindly ask for OST vinyl reissue. Do you have plans for a vinyl reissue? Thank you!
Unfortunately, no such plans for any of our released games right now.
(Why?)
Is there any chance of seeing power fists in Rogue Trader?
It's a good DLC material. Not coming in Lex Imperialis though.
Are you still planning to improve/update the narrative for Rogue Trader? Not in DLCs but in the base game.
Every major update so far has added a few new dialogue options or updated some details of the existing dialogues. Probably won't be a major overhaul, but you can expect more tweaks in future.
Did you consider adding colony projects or quests to add enforcer NPCs to accompany you in battle in Rogue Trader?
We thought of it during development, but felt that adding more units would excessively clutter the battlefield and annoy the player.
You added turn-based mode to Kingmaker based on player feedback, is it possible to add real-time with pause combat to Rogue Trader in a similar fashion?
The combat system in RT is not designed with RtwP in mind. Grid, cover system, out-of-order turns, many ability effects - nothing of this would function with RtwP, so this would be a design challenge of epic proportions.
To be honest, there are better ways to spend development resources to improve the game than this.
Demand for RtwP isn't as high as it was for Turn-based in Kingmaker, either.
Don't you think you've changed your approach to romance themes from Octavia/Regongar, twins to more narrow down trope? A month earlier you mention that you approved Camellia Romance Expanded and Woljif Romance Mod. Keep in mind that there is an even bigger one that's coming. Does this mean that you are aware of the problem of lack of options for different tastes?
No matter how hard you try to maximize the amount of possible options, you can't cover them all. Everyone has their own taste.
But we're happy that our community contains people so creative that they're willing to share their own, expanded vision of our characters. It's always interesting to see how the fans envision these characters could develop.
(That's kind of a loaded question. Way to play it safe with the default fluff answer).
Is there a quota that you are always plan before pre production? For example: 1 character for a normie consumer, 1 character for a bad boy/girl consumer and 1 character with a twist(paid dlc)? From my consumer point of view, it is a pity that no powerhouse offers any kind of marriage for a stronger alliance. Do you ever consider these types of possibilities?
We don't have quotas or any other similarly strict approach. We simply look at the story and discuss which characters could fit, to ensure an engaging narrative and a variety of personalities so that more or less everyone can find something for themselves.
Is the new Adeptus Arbites companion going to be romanceable? Are they going to be male or a female companion? And if they are romanceable, are they going to be open for all genders (we surely miss out on mlm romance options in the game, and after Wrath it shows)?
Yes! Male, romanceable by any gender.
Have you considered making games like Icewind Dale 3 or Neverwinters Nights 3?
Sounds fun, but would require an opportunity. Not on the horizon right now.
Will Warhammer 40k : Rogue Trader have improved warp encounters on the ship more varied and challenging?
Might happen. Could fit within one of the larger updates or a DLC.
Any chance of more companions from existing characters in the game? For example Malice and Commissar?
Not impossible if we deem it appropriate. There are definitely some NPCs with such potential in the game.
Hey, i have a lore question for you! How many inquisitor are there in Coronus Expanse? How did Heinrix become a Lord-Inquisitor of the Expanse without his conclave? And if there is a Conclave, why they didn't offer a more excessive help to Lord Inquisitor?
[Redacted]
Where did the paradox arise that a rogue trader is under the influence of the demon Tzeentch, but at the same time is “friends” with representatives of any other gods, except brothers in faith?
The Word Bearers, who play a major role in the story, are not limited to Tzeench.
When is the Nenio romance patch for WotR coming out?
Ask your local modmakers!
(People like Nenio?)
Are you hiring?
Yes! You can always check our website, owlcat.games, for job openings.
How can I best support you guys as a fan of your work?
Leave a review about our game on Steam, or simply come by and chat in our amazing community on any of the platforms!
Is there any way I can get some creative feedback or opinions on my companion suggestions from a few months back? I know they won't make it in the game, but it'd be fun to see what you guys think of some of them or if there's a favorite.
Hello! We receive a lot of suggestions almost daily, and unfortunately it's physically impossible to answer each of them - we'd have to completely halt the development to do so! We are really grateful for community input though, and there have been cases where it was really helpful for the development.
Will there ever be voiceover in other languages than English in your games? Russian, for example.
Voiceover is very expensive. We're only trying to move towards full English voiceover for the first time now, so any other languages are currently out of the question.
For your upcoming games, do you plan on continuing to rely on your paid customers for your QA after releasing a (barely) MVP? Lest we forget, RT released riddled with game breaking bugs where many players couldn’t even progress through the game and just quit.
It's absolutely fair to be bitter and frustrated about the game's technical quality at release. Frankly, we were frustrated ourselves, not expecting so many issues to slip through. For that we sincerely apologize.
We did our best at delivering the fixes as soon as possible, working closely with the community to set priorities. We have also made a lot of alterations and improvements to our internal processes since then, which resulted in largely flawless launch of the first DLC, Void Shadows. We hope that the renewed approach will help us prevent any issues of such scale in future.
Thank you for being with us even after our mistakes!
(The safe answer. Not blaming Geedubs at all).
Is there any plan on improving your future character talent UI in RT? Like using an easy to read tree that branches out or something less time consuming instead of that long list?
We've made a number of improvements to the level up UI since release, making it easier to read and navigate, and will probably add more in the following updates. We always welcome more feedback if you have any!
For me personally voice acting is a must. I saw on a thread, unless it was a misunderstanding, that moving forward we can expect full VA in future owlcat releases. Wotr having had its game of the year launch, looks like that ship has sailed, but if this is true are there any plans to update Rogue trader to this standard in the future or not?
Yes, we plan to move forward with full VO for the next projects, at least those we are developing, not publishing. As for Rogue Trader, the Lord Captain's voidship has unfortunately also already sailed, so currently there's no plan to update it with full VO.
(Why is it a must? I'd rather have more dialog if it's unvoiced than less if it is voiced).
Owlcat Games has a history of releases with accessibility features, such as colorblind mode. Why was that the first to be included and how do you choose which aspect of accessibility to include?
It happened to be the first problem we felt we could address. We hope to expand the list of options in the future.
Are there people with color blindness or other disabilities at Owlcat? If yes, how did their feedback help to improve the game?
Yes, there are people with color blindness in the team! Among the UI team actually, so they are checking that everything is well-visible.
(That's kinda nice. People implementing a feature that effects themselves).
Were any changes implemented into the game on request of people with disabilities?
A plenty. We've added varying font sizes, later increasing the maximum size even further, based on feedback. We've also made alterations to the coloring of the text in dialogue windows, and adjusted the warp route colors on the star map in Rogue Trader. Some annoying sounds were also made quieter on requests from people with misophonia.
Did you try to adapt the game in other ways? Perhaps add screen reading for people with sight problems?
Not yet, but it's something to consider.
Some people report that controller interface isn't convenient enough for some actions such as buffing. Will there be any improvements in this direction?
We can see how buffing at higher difficulty levels can be tedious in Wrath of the Righteous with controller. Unfortunately it's the nature of the system and there isn't much that can be done here. In Rogue Trader, the system is better optimized for playing with a controller.
Regardless, we always work on improvements, so if you have any ideas how you'd like controller support to be improved, we're always there to listen.
Your games are known for being extremely complex. You recently spoke about full voiceover plans, which is great for accessibility. But won't the variety of dialogues and amount of text suffer if you add full voiceover like in BG3? Wasn't there an "accessibility vs complexity" argument inside the team? Do you think accessibility may harm the game in some way?
In regards to CRPGs, we don't plan to significantly change our approach to dialogues to make them more suitable for voiceover, and plan to simply allocate more resources on it.
Other genres may have shorter dialogues where relevant.
-----------
Thank you for reading and see you in our worlds!
wtfNeedSignUp
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
I really wish they just decimate the descriptions. Especially in a setting like 40K the walls of text are a detriment (especially as they tend to be repetitive to the area) and visuals are king. Ditto things like reclassing are a must when you have a ton of options and you never know if the gear you get is going to be good for your class.
Ditto a lot of the token systems should be unified. It gets absolutely retarded that every class has its own unique tokens with their own effect. With a group it makes sense, but not when you keep track of multiple characters.
Ditto a lot of the token systems should be unified. It gets absolutely retarded that every class has its own unique tokens with their own effect. With a group it makes sense, but not when you keep track of multiple characters.
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2018
- Highlight
- #529
Owlcat has yet to put out one game that isn't horribly rushed and incomplete, specifically in the last third. I can't see that getting any better with them working on four games at once, especially that AAA Unreal one.
Anon88
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2020
Some of those question are really stupid, but there's some good info overall in there. I want to be excited for the future of Owlcat but god they keep saying things that sound terrible. A triple A game, non-RPG games, a huge focus on VA when they already have an issue finishing their games, it seems like they're moving in a direction that's going to really hurt the already shaky quality of their games.
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2019
They added the game to gamepass this week(I’m glad I didn’t buy it when it was on sale last month) and I’m having a lot of fun so far. Still learning all the mechanics though, I thought the worst drawback from my psyker abilities was just the occasional backfire until I spawned a bloodthirster and wiped my party.
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2019
Frankly IMO, people calling for that don't really get the Eldar. This is a species almost legendary for their double-crosses. And even if you take a charitable view of Yrliet and ascribe some morality to her, you're still a different species that she's known for what is to her a few moments and will die in a mere seventy or eighty years. A time period two Eldar might spend merely getting to know each other properly. Of course she will take a chance to save some of her people if it comes up. She feels bad about betraying you - in the same way someone would feel bad for kicking a puppy.
Anyway, sorry for the slight necro. I'm going to take a crack at playing this again and am weighing up classes and party composition. I'm just waiting for the new DLC which is hopefully this month. Though maybe I'll wait until a month has passed for bugs to be worked out.
I went on the Reddit forum for this game to see if there was any news about it and see what the current best character builds are considered to me but it's 80% just peoples fanart of their RT making out / flirting with one of the other characters. Reddit is awful.
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2018
I think the biggest problem with it is that Yrliet's motivation for betraying you comes entirely from seeing a piece of her homeworld in your quarters. Then, instead of just asking about it, she decides to betray you to the Drukhari in the hope that they'll help her, even though they're the, you know, Drukhari. Or at least that's how I remember it, I haven't played it since it was released in 2023.
Speaking of Yrliet, has anyone here killed her early on? Just curious if it has a major impact on the game, if it fucks you over at some point and/or you miss a good bit of content. I was thinking of killing her in my next play through once they're done with the game.
I'd be surprised if it was released this month. Owlcat is pretty good at building up hype. They'll usually spend a month releasing screenshots, artwork, a trailer or two, and doing previews. But they've been silent for a while; haven't even released a PC patch since February.
Also, I've been meaning to ask here: how well is the Void Shadows DLC companion integrated into the game? Previous DLC companions in Owlcat games have been poorly integrated into the main campaign's original quests, with them typically being mute outside of their own DLC content.
I've noticed that, too. It's like that on most subreddits for RPGs, especially the Owlcat ones.
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2020
In my recent playthrough I went full dogmatic so I killed Idira, Yrliet, Jae and Marazhai as soon as I could. I don't feel like I particularly missed much outside their personal quests. So like maybe 4-6 hours out of a 145ish hour playthrough. There are always failsafes if you would need them to push forward someone else's story.
You might miss out on some rewards for colony events though. I had a later game colony event where only Ulfar chimed in, presumably because I had executed everyone else who had an opinion on the matter.
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2019
I think seeing the voidship piece clues her in to the fact that Theodora was involved in its destruction. Yrliet starts to put things together at that point. Now the player may see this as not their fault but the RT is part of that Dynasty and in the WH40K RT dynasties have real binding significance. Its your family that is responsible for their fate whether you personally were around for that or not.
And hope is a powerful thing. No, she may not have certainty but it's a chance. Are the humans who killed her own worth giving up that chance for? Probably not to an Eldar. That's the thing I'm calling out - I think people vastly overestimate the importance of themselves to Yrliet. Yrliet might think you're "one of the good ones" for trying to ape (get it?) her ways, but you'll always be a Mon'keigh to her. That's Space Racism for you, I'm afraid. I mean she literally responds to you trying to give her a hug the same way you would a dog humping your leg.
I restate my case: Eldar are legendary in the lore for backstabbing you. They couldn't walk in a straight line if you paid them. And people think "But I didn't interrupt her when she was meditating. I'm a nice guy. She wouldn't betray me just for the chance to save her people."
I have not. But Idira goes the first chance I get. Argenta - execute the heretic!
Not completed it as I realised I was probably close to the new DLC and decided to hold fire. But for as far as I got it was pretty well integrated. There's a lot of token reactions added to various NPC dialogue if you have her with you but more than that, the DLC content is really good. And the new archetypes are tremendous fun. I really like building Heinrix as an Executioner. His biomancy powers go great with it.
Last edited:
wtfNeedSignUp
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Eldar suffer too much from writers making them waifus dindus. In standard lore, no matter Craftworld or Dark, they will fuck you other for their own goals that usually fuck themselves in the long run. The Emperor was 100% correct in executing all sentient xenos.
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2024
I know Jae is on nobody’s favourite lists, she definitely pales in comparison to the Act 1 frens. But I still get a laugh out the sheer enabling you can do, so much so that it puts Batman and Catwoman to shame.
“Give her whatever she wants,”
“Give her whatever she wants,”
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Eldar are one of the few groups that actually shows that they see you as a completely different class of being. A much, much, much lower form of intelligence that is prone to hyper violence. Humanity in 40k takes very little prompting to immediately return to flinging dung and screaming at the best of times.
Yet at the end of it they too will return to tantruming about their superiority when they overplay their hand. Then get a silver dollar sized hole blown into their skull.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
- Highlight
- #539
"No no, you don't understand, if we didn't obliterate Subsector Aurelia the Tyranids would eat an entire Craftworld!"
>The Blood Ravens then proceed to kill the Eldar followed up by wiping out the hive fleet, saving both the subsector and the Craftworld, costing the Eldar greatly in lives when they could have just cooperated.
The damn space elves really are their own worst enemies.
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2019
I respect the eldars focus on their own people over humanity. Let's face it, the imperium would do the exact same stuff to them 90 percent of the time. They probably wouldn't kill a world for one human but they would totally blow up craft worlds if it meant their own worlds survival.
The interesting thing is trying to meet in the middle and make it work. I hate you, you hate me and think I'm a lower life form, but we live in a universe infested with demons and bugs that eat everything, do you really want to waste your time fighting me?
I love how at the end of the day the best eldar outcome in rogue trader is a simple:
"Don't fuck with me and I won't fuck with you."
But even still, I really did appreciate that you could sort of connect with them and have an uneasy understanding. If you decide to forgive Yrliet and rescue her people, that's a powerful moment. They don't understand how or why the hell you are the way you are, but they appreciate that you're the exception to the rule.
The interesting thing is trying to meet in the middle and make it work. I hate you, you hate me and think I'm a lower life form, but we live in a universe infested with demons and bugs that eat everything, do you really want to waste your time fighting me?
I love how at the end of the day the best eldar outcome in rogue trader is a simple:
"Don't fuck with me and I won't fuck with you."
But even still, I really did appreciate that you could sort of connect with them and have an uneasy understanding. If you decide to forgive Yrliet and rescue her people, that's a powerful moment. They don't understand how or why the hell you are the way you are, but they appreciate that you're the exception to the rule.