Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is the latest project from Owlcat Games, the studio behind critically-acclaimed and widely beloved cRPGs Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Those who have pre-purchased certain editions of this turn-based game have a chance to try out the alpha version for themselves. It’s time to put away your bows and kukris and grab a firm hold of a bolter and see what the grim, dark future of the 41st Millenium has to offer.
It goes without saying that, being in an Alpha stage of its development, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader doesn’t provide the entirety of the content that will be available in the full version of the game. Additionally, certain features are not complete or not introduced at all, the game features limited voice-over and a number of bugs – if you don’t want to deal with any of those, it might be best to wait for the full release in terms of your own playthrough.
There will be certain spoilers ahead such as the mentions of certain story beats, names of the companions and the like, no more than you can find by scanning the game’s Steam page or the official site. If that’s not a deal-breaker, let’s dive right in!
Your path takes you to the Koronus Expanse, an incredibly perilous area of space that doesn’t want to part with its secrets or bend to your will. As comes from the title of the game, you become the Rogue Trader of the von Valancius dynasty. With the power granted by the Warrant of Trade, you have the right and the duty to explore the depths of the void and bring order to your holdings.
The position of Rogue Trader tackles the dichotomy of an RPG protagonist surprisingly well. Your rank provides you with the power to stick your nose into everything and anything happening in the Koronus Expanse, order others to do your bidding and rub elbows with the elite. At the same time, it also makes sense that as the newest Lord Captain you will be the one to personally tackle problematic aspects until the position of your dynasty is as iron-clad as it was under Theodora von Valancius. Rogue Trader is one of the few games where I was not actively wondering why the protagonist is the one doing all the work.
That said, while the Warrant of Trade does allow you to come very close to the line and commit deeds that might be otherwise considered heretical, it doesn’t grant you total immunity. You will be fighting for supremacy against other Rogue Traders of the Koronus Expanse whose rights and power rival or even exceed yours. There is the presence of the vile xenos that care not for your position. And, of course, the long arm of the Inquisition finds its way even onto your Voidship, making sure that the newest Rogue Trader doesn’t slip into Chaos from the almost criminal permissiveness of the job – that said, the game will offer you options to do just that if you so desire.
The Alpha version of the game offers a big slice of content from the second chapter of Rogue Trader which took me roughly 35 hours to beat. As the game technically doesn’t start from the beginning, there are certain things that are presented only in a limited fashion. For example, the character creation. In the Alpha, you cannot change your character’s portrait or pick a voice-over, but you do have control over the protagonist’s sex, class and background – the latter two offering a few options to choose from, presented in the form of a short dossier.
Additionally, the same can be said about the story beats. Your companions and loyal staff of the Voidship will refer to the circumstances in which you have met them and acquired your illustrious title, but the actual events are not playable just yet. Dropping into the middle of the story like that can lead to some confusion, especially if your level of acquaintance with the Warhammer 40,000 lore is not exactly high, but the game does an admirable job in introducing players both to the universe itself and the overall plot.
If you are worried that playing an official in the Imperium of Man means you are stuck being accompanied by zealous believers, you couldn’t be more wrong. The position of Rogue Trader exposes you to all kinds of people, from noble mutants and Inquisitors, to unsanctioned Psykers and Tech Priests, to space pirates and even xenos. Whether you want to try your luck and have them join your retinue or kill them on the spot according to your beliefs is up to you.
In the Alpha, you have access to 8 companions. Out of them, 6 you start with (although one of them takes a brief leave) and 2 more are potential recruits… or victims, depending on what your character was feeling like when meeting them and what moral code you choose to adhere to. You can learn more about the important NPCs such as Theodora von Valancius and the companions that make up your ever-noble retinue on the official site.
Needless to say, these people come from all walks of life with their reactions and beliefs shaped by the circumstances of their birth, chosen paths and social standing. Which also means that they will frequently butt into conversations to offer their invaluable opinions and even almost come to blows between themselves – and it is not something you want to ignore as the consequences can be quite dire.
All of the companions have their own specific quest chains, some of which can be tackled in the Alpha up to a certain point. Those allow you a glimpse into who your fellow explorers really are, what motivates them to stick around and also perhaps some things they don’t want you to know.
Rogue Trader gives you an impressive variety of responses and the ways to role-play your own character, from the way you treat your companions and staff, to the decisions regarding politics of your worlds and their officials, to the way you tackle xenos, heresy and Chaos. You can play as a good, helpful person with a strong moral code if you so desire (at least as far as the standards of the Warhammer universe are considered), but don’t be surprised when someone decides that your compassion is a weakness. A firm grip might yield better results, but the game won’t prevent you from making your own decisions.
Certain levels of abilities/feats also unlock additional dialogue options and actions, so you might want to build a well-rounded crew to make sure you won’t miss out on any opportunities! In addition to your own Lord Captain, you can bring up to 5 companions with you.
Overall, to me it felt like the game manages to strike a balance between role-playing options and a thoughtful immersion into the lore of the franchise without making it feel suffocating.
The content featured in the Alpha will give you plenty of opportunities to engage in combat. While there are certain similarities, almost right away it becomes clear that Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is not Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous 2.
First of all, Rogue Trader features exclusively turn-based combat vs. the option to switch to real-time with pause in Pathfinder. Additionally, the game gives you destructible environments, half and full covers, lines of sight, more ways for teamwork (Leader/Strategist options are built almost entirely around that, empowering your party, giving them extra turns, etc.) and much more. If anything, the overall gameplay reminded me more of Expeditions: Rome with quite a lot of Wasteland and X-COM thrown in.
And, much like in Expeditions: Rome, you will be faced with endless waves upon endless waves of enemies, making even the Pathfinder’s hellhole of the Worldwound look like a nice resort. Landed on a planet? Have a 20 minutes long altercation with local bandits. Left the mansion of an official after a lengthy, productive chat? The criminals make their return for round 2, this time involving the mind-numbingly slow and ineffective security and dragging it out that much more. Started a companion quest only to get sucked into another battle against unhappy smugglers or traveled through the Warp and got attacked by around 40 undead and a handful of Daemons? Yeah, all of that and more. Prepare all the grenades and AoE Psyker abilities, you will need them.
At the moment, the game misses the animation speed-up featured in PF: WotR’s turn-based combat option. And it direly, direly needs it, especially with many early battles consisting of human enemies auto-attacking you with weapons and sometimes throwing grenades. Let’s hope this option will be introduced at a later point in Rogue Trader’s development!
However, despite the feeling of sameness when it comes to the early battles, there are plenty of unique encounters that will test your mettle – from Chaos Marines to Daemon Engines and Hellbrutes. Nothing beats the feeling of dread you get from exploring an abandoned Voidship filled with corpses and corruption only to end up running into something you certainly didn’t expect and almost dying a dozen times over in the process of desperately fighting it off.
Note: keep adding loot you don’t need to your ship’s cargo. It will allow you to skip the Warp travel fights by assigning the personnel of the Voidship to do it in your stead if you have a cell that is filled to 100%.
If you have played Owlcat games before, by this point you are probably wondering what’s the catch, where is that one strategic side system like that of the Kingdom management in Kingmaker and leading the Crusade in Wrath of the Righteous. As Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is centered around exploring and taming the Koronus Expanse, it is not surprising that the game features a number of intertwined systems related to doing just that.
Space exploration consists of three stages. First, there is charting the course and moving through the Warp between points of interest, think of it like traversing the world map in Pathfinder. The game does offer an explanation of why your Navigator has to map it all anew but, in case you don’t want spoilers, I will not mention it. Depending on the length and difficulty of the path, you have a certain chance to be attacked by enemy forces of various levels of strength. You can use your cargo to have the personnel fight the boarding party, head out yourself or use certain insight points of your Navigator to make the travel safer. Moving to the neighboring point that is connected to your current location in a linear fashion is usually relatively safe, but charting a direct course to another position half across the sector comes with peril.
Once you have gotten to a system you aimed for, you get to fly between the planets, stations, abandoned ships and more. This is also the stage where you can get attacked by space pirates or xenos and get sucked into turn-based ship combat. Through the entirety of the Alpha content, nothing gave me quite as much trouble as facing three Dark Eldar ships at once that would also hop into invisibility after every successful hit against them.
There are a number of ship-related positions that the game automatically assigns your companions to (which, I assume, will be manual and more intricate at the later stages of development). This also grants you abilities to use like replenishing the shields. In their Alpha version, these battles are long and gruesome and can be quite frustrating. Seeing how both Pathfinder games had options to automate or significantly ease up their respective strategy bits, it’s time to sit tight and wait and see how this system gets developed.
If you manage to traverse the system and come out victorious of any ship battles there could have been, you finally get to reach the planet of interest and explore it. Most of the planets have only some kind of material to extract off of the surface, with some also providing a brief commentary by a companion. A few, usually quest-related planets, stations or abandoned ships can be boarded at which point the game switches to the usual squad-based gameplay.
Overall, the system and planet exploration reminded me of Mass Effect 2 & Mass Effect 3. The systems of both games have the single, similar drawback: most of this exploration comes with barely any rewards and is usually just a padding for more content. The points that offer a quest or a companion interaction are quite interesting and varied but they are still a drop in the bucket of all the systems and planets you will visit on your journey.
To sum it up, the game holds up surprisingly well considering it is only the Alpha version. The additions and spins on the gameplay are intriguing and full of possibilities. There are certain missing features or the systems that haven’t been fully developed – such as the entire exploration system, minus the Warp travel – but it is to be expected from the current development stage.
As a newcomer to the Warhammer 40k franchise but an avid fan of Pathfinder games, I was somewhat reluctant about Rogue Trader before the Alpha test due to the expectation that it would be filled with grimdark and overcoming difficulties in an overdone epic way.
However, while still pretty dark, more so than Wrath of the Righteous, Rogue Trader has a complex enjoyable atmosphere overall, offering cunning politicians ready to tear out your throat, fanatical adherents of the Emperor, criminals who only care about their own hides but also plenty of biting humor and even relatively touching moments.
Note: Rogue Trader game key was provided for the purposes of covering the game.
