Rogue Trader - Interview @ Wccftech

Wccftech chatted with Alexander Mishulin, Creative Director at Owlcat Games about Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader:

Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader Q&A – Owlcat on Addressing Beta Feedback, Improving Romances and Thanking Larian

It's been a great year for roleplaying game fans thanks to the release of several great games, chiefly the long-awaited cRPG Baldur's Gate 3 (now in pole position for Game of the Year awards after a near-flawless critical reception), and Owlcat Games made it even better when it announced that Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader would launch in early December on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X.

Given that inXile and Obsidian have abandoned the cRPG genre, at least for the time being, their next projects focused on first-person action combat, Owlcat is definitely the most experienced studio after Larian. Their Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous games have been received very well on PC and consoles alike.

With Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader, the studio is set to deliver the first cRPG set in the grimdark universe created by Games Workshop. Ahead of the upcoming launch, I briefly chatted with Alexander Mishulin, Creative Director at Owlcat Games. Topics ranged from addressing the community's feedback obtained through beta tests, providing more varied romances, and thanking Larian for Baldur's Gate 3's role in expanding the cRPG genre.

Let's begin with the preparation phase before battles. Is it always available or only in certain situations?

It's mostly available. Only when you are stepping into an ambush will you be unable to take the preparation phase, and you will be forced to fight in the positions you were in. But there aren't many of these scenarios in Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader, maybe one in ten or even one in twenty.

I have a question regarding the rule set. You've previously made the Pathfinder games and adapted that rule set. Now, you are adapting the Rogue Trader ruleset right for this game. Can you speak to the differences in adapting these two different rulesets from tabletop to the videogame format? Also, what kind of changes did you make for Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader?

Sure. It's actually the approach to the adaptation is different. With those two Pathfinder games, we were striving to be as close to the tabletop experience as we possibly could, while in Rogue Trader, we mostly took inspiration from tabletop rules.

The skills are kind of the same. Some abilities have similar names, but all the mechanics inside are our own, and one of the reasons for that is we have to have a very long progression for the characters. The Rogue Trader system is not very rich in terms of abilities, spells, and everything, so we had to add more elements to provide more builds for the characters and more synergies between different characters. So, the approach is different for these games.

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Thanks Couchpotato!