Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader developers talk about jumping into the world of 40K

With Rogue Trader's release date just around the corner, Shacknews spoke with the Owlcat Games team to learn more.

October 26, 2023 3:00 PM

Owlcat Games is coming off one of its best titles ever with 2021's Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Even with the pressure there to live up to that gem, Owlcat looks to be up to the task with the upcoming Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader. The game is set to release in a matter of weeks and to learn more, we spoke with Lead Narrative Designer Olga Kellner and Creative Director Alexander Mishulin.

"This time around, we are not making the game as close as possible to the tabletop rules," Mishulin told Shacknews. "We took an inspiration from [tabletop] rules and built upon this foundation to make a hybrid system where a lot of abilities and talents are our own, because we had to scale them for one hour-long game and a 100-hours long game and it is difficult to do form the original material. It's far more compact and growth is less significant for each particular character. All the names are the same and the way abilities are named are the same, so you can expect familiar things, but the mechanics itself could be different. It's tailored to the turn-based tactics of our own."

Shacknews has had a few opportunities to check out Rogue Trader in the past. The game looks to be a substantial strategy experience featuring numerous classes, different interactions between those classes, and significant challenges from powerful enemies. Enemies like the Necrons promise to bring strength, as well as a united and cohesive strategy to every battle. Players will have to do their best with the characters they have available to them, which include melee fighter Abelard Werserian, psyker Idira Tlass, and Magos Explorator of the Adeptus Mechanicus Pasqal Haneumann.

After several playable alpha and beta periods, Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader is set to officially arrive soon. Look for it to release on PC on Thursday, December 7. For more interviews like this, vit and subscribe to Shacknews and Shacknews Interviews on YouTube.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?

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