CRPGs need to be vast for your choices to matter, says Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader dev
"That's the reason why our game is so long."
Earlier this week I attended a hands-off preview for Owlcat's forthcoming CRPG Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, which is shaping up nicely, inasmuch as there's anything "nice" about a Warhammer 40,000 game. Rogue Trader is a party-based affair in which you play a sort of Warhammer East India Company, tasked with flipping outlying worlds to the Imperium. In order to carry out this goal, you're granted a lot more individual license than most human residents of the 40K universe. You can, for instance, recruit ungodly xenos to your grimdark troupe, operate a private armada, and even colonise planets and turn them into your own personal piggybank. Just watch you don't push the whole "heresy" thing too far.
I'll have more for you on the subject soonish, but here's an interesting advance snippet from my interview with Owlcat's creative director Alexander Mishulin, in which we discussed what really distinguishes a CRPG from other kinds of role-playing game. According to Mishulin, it's all about designing for choices with consequences that genuinely run the entire length of the game, without (somehow) getting lost in the narrative undergrowth.
"In our opinion, the focus we put in our games is on crises, consequences and reactions," Mishulin told me. "So when you make a decision, you should be able to see what it leads to, and you should be able to see your companions react to your particular decision, whether they like it or not. Sometimes the consequences should be rather harsh, or hard to deal with." He gave the example of Space Marine and Inquisitor characters leaving your Rogue Trader party, and even becoming ferocious enemies, if you flirt a little too conspicuously with aliens and blasphemers.
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