New trailer, new rant.
Oh, it's no secret how not-immune I am to the throes of fandom and getting lost in the steam of excitement for an upcoming game, but I managed to supress that irrational side of my quite deftly in recently times. Largely because there just haven't been a great many recent games that have caught fire in my old little shrivelled heart; but if there is one that absolutely has; it's Owlcat Games' Warhammer CRPG. You see, I've never actually had a chance to get into Warhammer, for as diverse and rich it's worlds of lore are, the hobby has been this dense and yielding web that no one wanted to open up to me. I knew someone who themselves was a miniature fan, but refused to talk about his hobby when pressed. There was just no avenue into the world of the dark future. And don't even ask me to muscle into the franchise through all of it's heady lore material, endless wiki pages and Books! Where does a guy even start there? And then I found Owlcat.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned what drew me to Owlcat, but it was delightfully circumstantial. I had just started getting into Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, and was looking around for CRPGs to pick up once that game was over; not wanting to end my fun with the game genre. I found a video on Youtube just listing off a bunch of CPRGs and one of them caught my eye for the title 'Kingmaker', in which you serve a kingdom as king. "Huh" I thought, "I've heard of RPG's that try similar concepts, but they always turn out undercooked. I wonder if CRPGs could do the idea any more justice." And so I threw that game at the top of my back catalogue list. Fast forward a few months later and I was trying out, and falling in love with, Pathfinder: Kingmaker. A truly unforgiving and challenging RPG unlike any other I'd played before. That was what solidified Owlcat Games as my RPG developer of choice for this age.
RPG developers seem to go through this cycle, for whatever reason. Unlike FPS makers or driving game developers, they're not content in sticking to what makes their games great and enjoyable; they're always looking to change up their craft and become something more. It's admirable, if it weren't also consistently so tragic. Bioware kept reiterating upon themselves and rewriting their core, until they grew and rewrote themselves so much that they forgot how to be an RPG developer in the first place. Implacable iconic RPGs started to become pastiche and flaccid. Depth gave way to bloat. Bioware trickled out into a façade of a developer that shares the same name on the building, but none of the talent inside of it. (A shame.) Bethesda went through something similar, although on an even bigger stage given their fame. It didn't help that they were undermined and outperformed by a guest developer on one of their flagship franchises. But now even their up coming Starfield looks okay. Like a game more interested in treading any waters that aren't RPG related, rather than a AAA evolution upon what an RPG can be.
Owlcat haven't lost themselves yet, and they don't yet appear to be on that path to self ruination. And I want to drink deeply of their glory days for as long as they last because I really need a consistent hit maker back in my radar to renew my excitement in this art we call game making. As such I've given myself over to trusting them fully. I had never really heard of Pathfinder before I played Kingmaker, and allowed their experienced eyes to introduce me to the franchise and what is so great about it next to D&D. Wrath of the Righteous will give me even more of that, once I get around to it, and I'll surely enjoy that just as much. But then they turned around and offered me something I didn't know I wanted out of them; an accessible in-road to the Warhammer sci-fi universe. And what could a growing boy like me do but salivate at the mouth?
Rogue Trader is going to take a very brave divisive step with it's gameplay, they're going full turn-based without stop and pause like their previous titles have had. Now personally I'm a huge fan of games built for turn-based action, as for me it speaks of a confidence in the tactical suite to be robust enough that slowing down the gameplay and allowing the player to go over all their tools, rather than instinctively default to their favourites in the heat of a full action battle, won't unravel the complexity of the gameplay. Having no idea how the Table Top of Warhammer is even played, I can't say whether this is a fitting choice or not, we're just going to have to see on the day of release. I will say, however, that I did not expect the game to go this route. Not with the plethora of guns on hand. I figured that's be ideal for stop and start gameplay; so I'm curious right now.
The scale of the game the team have embarked on is what really gets to me, with a galaxy map that is going to cover dozens of differing worlds across solar systems that I can only assume the Rogue Trade is going to steadily assume governance over as they stamp their Imperial zeal over the cosmos. Making all these worlds feel diverse and different from one another is going to take a hell of a lot of work from the asset department; at the very least. This just might be their most ambitious title yet, and Owlcat has not been a company to lack for ambition in their relatively short career! Already with this game I'm noticing a lot more complexity with environmental textures, as required given the setting, which has the potential to provide some really impressive sights for us once we start getting glances at some of the oppressive opulence of the Imperium. (Although this game does take place far away from the heart of the Empire. As, from what I can tell, does most Warhammer.)
I'm also very interested in the array of companions we're going to be introduced to throughout Rogue Trader and want to just dive into their stories and motivations. I think one of them is an ex-Space Marine, unless I totally misunderstood his character bio. There's also a Sister of Battle joining the crew and even an Alien! (Or 'Xeno' to use the game's parlance.) I roughly know of the very stringent rules of the Warhammer universe, and the intense xenophobia that the dark future dwells in, so I was actually somewhat concerned about the breadth of really interesting and tied up characters we'd get to interact with. It's one thing having companions that are individually interesting, but to have them also tied to significant pillars of this universe, and thus serve as an ambassador for that pillar, whether through their adherence to their creed or defiance of it, is what makes companion characters the best they can be, in my opinion. Right now we're getting crewmates from just about every interesting corner of Warhammer. I'm still holding out hope for an Orc mate though; maybe that'll be the DLC down the line...
What I've loved about this whole process is how involved Owlcat has been with the community. Dropping beautifully scripted articles going into depth about the factions of the universe and the companions we're going to meet, to frankly discussing gameplay systems and even giving us fun time-lapses of assets being modelled in real time. It's a very unique development-consumer relationship for a game of this size which makes someone like me, interested in both the game and the process which makes it, glued to their Youtube community page. It makes it easy to surround myself in the world of Rogue Trader and never let that candle in the window die out for what I hope is going to be another entry in my list of 'must play CRPGs'. I love the RPG resurgence we're seeing this decade, and companies like Owlcat are, currently, the leading reason why.
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