Owlcat Games Participated in a Huge AMA for Pathfinder & Rogue Trader

Owlcat Games Compiled Reddit AMA 2024 Answers for Pathfinder & Rogue Trader

Developer Owlcat Games, the creators of Pathfinder: Kingmaker & Wrath of the Righteous as well as Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, compiled a great deal of answers for a variety of questions received from the community in December 2024. You can check out the full list on the studio’s official website, or scroll down below for some of its points.

Note that there is a lot to go through, so if you are interested in the company’s doings over the last year and what’s coming in the future, you should check out the full page.

Warhammer-related answers:

  • If the studio decides to make another CRPG in the 40K universe, Dark Heresy, Black Crusade, and Only War all sound like they would have great potential. Right now, there are a number of reveals planned for this year, so stay tuned.
  • Horus Heresy/30k era game has not been discussed or considered. To a prospect of Warhammer Fantasy/Old World RPG/Age of Sigmar, the developers admitted that it sounds exciting, but the priorities are elsewhere at the moment.
  • There were a few companions that were ultimately scrapped from Rogue Trader. A Slaanesh Daemonette and a heretic cultist witch for the late game Heretical conviction that didn’t fit the scope of the game, and Nocturne of Oblivion who felt more natural as an enigmatic NPC instead.
  • Regarding more DLCs for Rogue Trader: it isn’t 100% set in stone yet, but the developers do have ideas and plans that are being assessed and discussed. The recent DLC of your dreams survey will definitely be helpful.
  • Changing the ship size for Rogue Trader would require a major overhaul of the system. At the moment, the game is not built with that in mind.
  • Lex Imperialis, slated for late Spring 2025, will introduce a new male Arbites companion whose romance will be available for any gender. Also, do you like dogs?

Pathfinder-related answers:

  • The studio loves Pathfinder and keeps in touch with Paizo. Currently, all teams in the studio are occupied with other projects. Edition-wise, nothing is set in stone, and the studio would certainly be open to explore PF2E as an option.
  • Regarding Xbox Series X texture/resolution upgrade for Wrath of the Righteous, quote: “PF2 is a massive technical challenge to optimize for consoles. When we assessed the possibility of an upgrade to 9th gen for Xbox, we 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 :(“
  • The development for Wrath of the Righteous has been finished, and most of the team has moved on to other projects at this point.
  • PF: Kingmaker was developed while Owlcat Games was a part of a larger publishing company, and after the studio went independent in 2019, the rights remained with the publisher. Despite all efforts, any attempts to reclaim the rights were futile so far.

Other:

  • The Shadowrun setting is awesome, and there are people who’d be excited to work on it should an opportunity arise. It is not among the games Owlcat is working on at the moment, however. Similar deal with Starfinder: the team likes the idea of a game in a space setting, but it isn’t among the projects in development right now.
  • Players can look forward to more Owlcat CRPGs in licensed IPs. An original IP game is something the studio hopes to do eventually, but it is not on the horizon yet.
  • Owlcat Games is developing at least one project using Unreal Engine, but the developers also don’t want their giant expertise in Unity to be wasted. Most likely, the studio will continue using both engines for different projects.
  • Regarding a hint about an extra layer of strategy gameplay (Kingdom/Crusade/Ship management) in the next Owlcat title, the studio only said “Do you enjoy searching for answers?
  • Regarding creating a trilogy or series like Mass Effect to tell a longer story: “By the end of each our game, the 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.”
  • On collaboration with Larian Studios: “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.”
Written by
A lover of all things RPG and TBS, Catherine is always looking for a new fantasy world to get lost in.

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