As a big fan of the Warhammer franchise, I am really looking forward to the release of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. While the disappointment from the latest releases was not crushing, it was significant nonetheless. A ray of hope comes from Owlcat Games studio, known for its entries into the Pathfinder franchise, that has teased the community with the promise of the first classic cRPG set in the 41st Millenium.
The events of the game revolve around the so-called Rogue Traders, agents of the Imperium of Man that are given the right to explore the distant corners of the galaxy. Our protagonist is a descendant of one such ancient dynasty and will travel on his or her own Voidship in order to expand the influence of the Imperium. Of course, you will not be making such a journey alone: there will be a cast of companions ready to join you, including but not limited to a Sister of Battle, an Eldar Ranger, a Space Marine and more.
Owlcat Games took on a responsible job of creating an ambitious game set in a very complex universe. Players will get to explore the grim, dark future of the 41st Millenium where harsh realism combines with dark techno-fantasy and sci-fi. The word “severe” describes the entire universe in the best possible way: suffering, death, slavery, corruption and betrayal that lead to the destruction of dozens of planets in a sector. Chaos, xenos, traitors to humanity and apostates await…
What is there not to love?
Being a Rogue Trader is no easy feat. The fate of entire planets and even systems may depend on your word, and the game is eager to demonstrate that level of responsibility and power. If you want to, you can help a planet with food or leave it to die and its people to slide into savagery and heresy. If you want to, upon visiting a forge planet taken over by the forces of Chaos, you can purge the heretics with righteous fire or, perhaps, use their work for your own gain… or even consider joining them. Confrontations between the lawful authority and criminal syndicates, xenos, Chaos, traitors to humanity and mutants, you will meet all of that and more in the world of Warhammer as well as on your path to greatness as the Rogue Trader.
Your decisions to help, kill or even just walk by will affect the game world. Owlcat Games introduced an incredible amount of freedom of choice to the game where the right and wrong depends entirely on YOUR point of view. I had reloaded a handful of times to replay 2-3-5 hours of game just to see the consequences of a different decision, and quite a lot may change – from insignificant details to the fate of entire planets and your retinue.
Each conversation offers a multi-level choice and provides little bits of information, both about the world of the game as well as the companions, planets, star systems and the in-game universe in general. The Warhammer universe is huge and so is the amount of info that you will receive in-game. Even just in the second chapter of the game you are looking forward to many hours of reading and talking as well as being offered footnotes explaining the more obscure parts of the franchise.
The role-playing system of the game is just as impressive. At the moment, the Alpha version of the game offers only a limited selection of builds. But remembering Owlcat Games’ previous work with the Pathfinder franchise, it is going to be something else. Much like in Pathfinder, Rogue Trader offers quantitative characteristics and skills as well as their comparison with difficulty checks (DC) and die rolls.
The class system is also quite interesting: when creating a character, you choose the background of your future Rogue Trader and the career that acts as the initial class of the protagonists that will determine the starting characteristics and skills. Upon reaching level 16, you are given a choice among 4 advanced careers that greatly enhance and expand the hero’s abilities.
Let’s note right away that:
- The release version will have more careers and backgrounds compared to the Alpha;
- The availability of the advanced careers depends on the choice of the initial class;
- The initial and the advanced career enter into synergy with each other, strengthening the abilities belonging to both paths.
The system might not be the usual one for cRPGs, but it is easy to understand after looking into it for 10 minutes or so. At the moment, it is a pity that it is difficult to understand what exactly will be given by an Advanced Career upon choosing it. That said, when leveling up you have the versatility to choose perks and stats.
Owlcats have taken a step away from the Pathfinder series and instead took to the more tactical, purely turn-based combat.
The battlefield is divided into a grid, there are certain hit percentages and lines of sight and all the while your own characters and enemies alike can hide behind covers of varying degrees of protection. For example, it will be more difficult to hit you if you hide behind a column but you have got to be careful if you try to take cover behind, say, a barrel. It can explode in the most inopportune moment and take an important character out.
Yes, Rogue Trader features destructible environments, from knocking down columns to whittling down enemy covers and exploding stuff. Depending on your actions, the battlefield can change drastically. For example, you can start off the fight in a passageway with gorgeous columns and find yourself surrounded by bare walls and pieces of rockrete by the end.
When aiming or preparing an ability, you can see the chances of it landing and the estimated damage it might provide. Hitting an opponent from behind will offer, for example, a hit chance of 95% with 14 to 21 damage. However, when you set your sights on an enemy in cover, you might only get 55% chance to land a hit with damage only going as far as 14 to 16. Much like your own characters, enemies can miss and even hit other characters with the projectiles, both allies and enemies. It can be quite amusing to see how a shot from a sniper rifle damages another enemy standing behind the target instead of killing it.
The battles look spectacular and bloody, the variety and thoughtfulness put into it already quite impressive in the Alpha version of the game. The diversity is no joke, the game features a HUGE variety of abilities, enemies, grenades and effects.
Lasguns, sniper rifles, pistols, xenos weaponry, flamethrowers, melta-weapons, magma blasters and other weapons are just waiting to be used, provided you have the required skills and passives. Additionally, weapons have different firing modes and actions. Xenos weapons can poison, a flamer can burn a dozen heretics in a single cone-attack. Meltaguns and Bolters are their very own special case. Just the sound of shots is enough of a reward for the difficulties of their use.
The abilities your character has access to depend on the chosen career. Leaders can buff their team and give companions extra turns, Strategists can create zones that strengthen your units in a variety of ways while Adepts can mark enemies’ weak points, allowing your team to maximize its damage output.
I will keep my thoughts about Psykers to myself as it feels like their abilities have not been revealed to the fullest in the Alpha, but still, spectacular lightning shows can already cause a storm of emotions. Positive for the player and a bit less so for the enemies on the receiving side of them. How would you like the Navigator’s third eye attack targeting everything that she sees in front of her or lightning arc frying everything along the chain. There are also some useful situative abilities like a Kinetic Kick that can stun your target.
In battle, you have Movement Points and Action Points that are personal for each party member as well as team-wide Momentum (heroic points) and the Veil (points of the border between the real world and the Immaterium).
Speaking of Momentum, these are the points that are gained by the team for defeating enemies. After having accumulated a certain number of them, one of your heroes will be able to use a “heroic skill” that has the potential to drastically change the battlefield. It has another side to it: instead of the Heroic skill, you can also use the “Desperate Measures” type of ability, another powerful ability (unique to each character) that will place a debuff on your team.
The Veil affects Psykers and their abilities, the more you use their skills, the more daemons are presented on the field of battle, the stronger the damage of these abilities. However, it can also backfire and summon a powerful daemon.
Owlcats have also introduced an interesting addition to the in-battle movement. When you are planning the route of your character, the game will show you the projection of the character, lines of sight with the attack chance, you can also project the use of abilities, seeing all the consequences, areas of damage and radius.
The battles in the game, although plentiful, are backed up by the plot. You won’t have a pile of trash fights with random opponents just because the game needs to use up your time. Every battle, even the ones that come from the warp travel, are supported by the story of the universe.
A daemon appeared in your quarters? Warp, used by ships to traverse space, is their domain and is far from safe. A Drukhari spy sneaked onto the Voidship? They are secretive saboteurs that love suffering and pain. Therefore, when you find yourself in battle against them, the entire place will be covered in mines and the people fighting against you will be pumped up with both drugs and explosives to make it more interesting.
Nurgle’s daemon invasion of the Captain’s Bridge is something I recall with a shudder. After the death of each daemon, the corpses of the dead will rise to fight against you, poisonous gas and fumes filling up the entire location while dozens of enemies prepare to move against you. That was quite a fight.
The sheer number of enemies sometimes is simply overwhelming, and bosses are a threat of their own caliber. What do you think about a Daemon Engine machine that has a huge amount of health and armor and answers each of your attacks with two of its own? You might run into one of those aboard an abandoned ship while the other one will be waiting for you in the warm company of the Magos of the Forge, who is also not an ordinary enemy. As a high-standing Adeptus Mechanicus, he is filled with tech to the eyebrows and is quite the monster of battle in his own right.
Overall, the only drawback for me is the sheer number of enemies which seems like too much from time to time. Fighting through 3 dozen zombies simply to reach a couple of daemons, the real objective of a battle, can take up a lot of time.
Another important aspect of the battle system are the spaceship fights. At the moment, they are present in the most basic form and can be quite a bother to push through. You still have the battlefield split into grids, but this time it represents outer space. Your ship can move forward, using up movement points. You can only press onward or turn by a sector at a time to the left or right, there is no way to move backwards or sideways or immediately strafe to a side, Voidships don’t move that way. Similar rules apply to the enemy ships as well.
Even in this early version of ship combat, there are a lot of things you should keep in your mind: the shields are split into sections, which ones should be strengthened or restarted, should you fire from onboard guns or maybe launch torpedoes?
The enemy types also differ, from ordinary space pirates whose ships are about to fall apart even without your help to Chaos cultists that can teleport around to the cunning Eldar whose invisibility greatly hinders your combat abilities.
The travel between planets/systems is presented in the form of Warp transitions on the map of the Koronus Expanse. A Warp storm raged in the region and thus many paths have been lost, so you have to chart them anew and pave your own. On the map it is reflected with a variety of colors:
- Green – safe transport, no adventures to talk about;
- Yellow – various losses among the crew and minor problems;
- Red – prepare yourself, daemons are likely to break through the Geller field and attack you in a randomized fight;
- Orange – one of the previous two outcomes.
You can lower the risk by 1 degree by spending a special resource known as the Navigator’s Insight. Each time you arrive in the new system and scan for warp routes, you will gain a point of Navigator’s Insight. Its usage can be quite helpful for hopping across the entirety of the Expanse to arrive at a destination directly.
It’s time to take a brief look at the plot.
I am not going to tackle all aspects of the story, but Owlcats have prepared an extensive, authentic story. Betrayals, murders, political intrigue, struggles for power over the sector, Chaos cults, daemons, Inquisition and even Exterminatus – all of that and more can be found in Alpha. Which, in and of itself, is just a slice of the second chapter of the game.
When you just want to restore your Dynasty to its former glory and pursue trade relationships… One just has to wonder: what does the Inquisition have to do with it?
You can choose your path between Loyalist, Radical or Chaos. The variability is huge, let me remind you that I sometimes loaded a game from 5-ish hours before just to see another route to pass through a planet. And it would change a lot depending on your choices.
The atmosphere didn’t disappoint: violence, cynicism, and grim dark future of the 41st Millenium in all its glory. Special effects, aesthetics, entourage and even sounds convey the feeling perfectly. Daemon laughter cuts to the core, sudden visions of the crew tearing each other apart, mentions of the horrors of the Warp… Just wow.
On your journey, you will be accompanied by a cast of characters, each with their unique story, behavior and complex relationships both amongst themselves and with the Rogue Trader. Your decisions will have an impact on them, not everyone will stand resigned for your actions. Oh, there are romances, of course – but not with the Sister of Battle, alas.
There is no point in diving deeper into the technical component of the game as Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader currently offers only a slice of content and systems in its Alpha stage. The enemies’ AI, difficulty settings, pathing, all of that is going to change a thousand times by the time the game launches.
As a fan of Warhammer universe, I recommend this game for any person with love for its lore, even if cRPG might not be your cup of tea. The grim, dark future of Warhammer awaits since Owlcat Games managed to grasp and convey the very essence of the universe in Rogue Trader. May the Emperor protect!
Note: Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader game key was provided for the purposes of covering the game. Check out the official site to learn more.
