Rogue Trader - Void Shadows DLC Q&A

Wccftech interviewed Anatoly Shestov about Rogue Trader and the new DLC Void Shadows:

Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader Void Shadows Q&A – DLC Will Be Integrated in Main Story; Launch Had Way Too Many Bugs

To cap off a memorable 2023 for RPG fans, Owlcat Games (Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous) released Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader, the first-ever cRPG based on the beloved setting invented by Games Workshop, last December.

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Six months later, we've interviewed Owlcat Executive Producer Anatoly Shestov to discuss the game's ongoing support (to clean up some of that lack of polish mentioned in our review summary) and the recently announced Void Shadows DLC, which is set to add 15 hours of new story content, a new romanceable companion, and several new features when it launches on August 8. Scroll below for the full transcript of our conversation.

Can you talk about the fans' reception and the commercial sales of Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader so far?

Well, we delivered the game to the players in December, and the overall reception was quite positive. We were shocked by the positive sentiment that the player base shared with us. Of course, some people were unhappy with our choices with the companions, story decisions, and other stuff. But overall, we were praised for the best depiction of the Warhammer setting ever, not just in CRPG. And the praises were there, and they were deserved.

We definitely did not do everything that we wanted to do. That's why we continued to support the game, not just with bug fixing but with the overall improvement of performance, quality of life, and the different nuances of the game. By this time, we have already delivered around 10 patches, each targeting different sections of the game.

We're almost there to have the game we want to play ourselves, want to play more, want to replay with different play styles. For example, with the last patch, we delivered the certification of Steam Deck support. It was not just for the player base, for the audience. We just felt that the controls' experience could be better in our game, that it's not so comfortable to dig through text, it's not so comfortable to pick options, so we decided to pursue this not because of the value but because of our internal desire to make this aspect of the game better and based on the players' reception, based on our feedback and internal experience, we feel like we're there on this particular part.

A bit later, we will deliver a huge 1.2 patch to the player base with lots of additional balance tweaks and changes because players found ways to break our game through a bunch of bugs. They found such powerful combinations that they could defeat bosses in one turn, so we wanted to fix this. On the other hand, we wanted to improve those not-so-popular and less-than-effective builds.

Overall, we spent a lot of time on this particular thing and lots of small aspects of the game. For example, the user interface wasn't so nice and stylish and bright, so we tweaked lots of things. Overall, the interaction with every UI element of the game should feel smoother and easier. Our main UI art developer was given the freedom to play himself and fix the things that he felt were not as perfect as he wanted them to be.

Many things we are approaching at this particular moment revolve around our internal experience of playing Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader and adjusting it to feel better. That's basically how we perceive what we're doing right now. Aside from the DLCs that are in the process of being made, we just make sure that every part of the game will see some additional portion of love, attention, and care from the developers.

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Thanks Couchpotato!