Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Tradercreative director Alexander Mishulin leads his party of six spacefaring ne’er-do-wells in a battle against a potentially-unending force of Necrons to demonstrate how combat works in this 40k experience, and I can only watch on in awe. The fight was full of close calls, and the party had to take some risks, overextending with melee and going all-in to win the day.
The team members that you recruit throughout the course of the game are largely determined by your actions. For the preview demo, Mishulin assembles a party of outcasts and cutthroats, indicating that the player character had skirted Imperial law and, if not for the Warrant Of Trade granting him immunity, would probably have been branded a heretic by now.
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Mishulin’s customized protagonist is a former officer in the Astra Militarum, formerly known as the Imperial Guard. With his old uniform still peeking out from under his armor, he specialized in ranged combat and, thanks to his wealth as a Rogue Trader, had access to weaponry typically reserved for elite Space Marines.
Alongside right-hand man and party tank Absalem, smuggler Jae, psyker Idira, and Tech-priest Pasqal is one particularly unusual party member -Marazhai, a high-damage melee assassin, who was a Drukhari, a species of bloodthirsty space pirates. The Drukhari are almost always antagonists inWarhammer40k lore, so seeing one fighting alongside humans got me wondering what other xeno party members might be available.
After introducing the characters, Mishulin took his party over a hill on an alien planet. He hadn’t told me anything about what we might encounter, but as soon as a black-and-green stone structure came into view I knew what was coming; Necrons, one of thedeadliest species in the galaxy.Even with a high-level party, this would be a tough fight.
As the team approached the structure, Necrons teleported to the area in their characteristic burst of green energy; four Warriors, each about equivalent to a Space Marine in power, swarms of Canoptek Scarabs that could overwhelm the heroes and repair damaged Necrons, and an Immortal.
The hardiest members of Mishulin’s team have about 120 hit points. The Immortal has approximately three times that and quality gear; it would be the priority target.
Since the party had been expecting trouble, Mishulin gets a setup round, positioning his characters before the start of the fight. If it had been a fully-unexpected ambush, he explains, he wouldn’t have had that luxury.
After two weeks of playingBaldur’s Gate 3, with its free-form movement and anything-goes battles, I’m overjoyed to finally see tactical grids and cover icons again. This is going to be my kind of game when it comes to combat.
Mishulin’s melee-focused party relied on Marazhai, the clear MVP, to handle the Necron threat, but different teams with different builds could have used an alternate approach; sniping from the ridge above, perhaps, or using flamethrowers and other AoEs to quickly eliminate the Scarabs and take away the Necrons' healing potential. Considering that I’m already planning my own campaign with the game’s Battle Sister party member, who wasn’t shown in this demo, I suspect that my own strategy will resemble the latter when the game launches.
The team’s abilities and gear reflect a very late-game level of power; the encounter takes place roughly eighty hours into the game’s estimated one-hundred hour campaign. “We don’t know how to make short games,” Mishulin said with a laugh as he started playing.
After the battle, I got to chat with Mishulin and Owlcat Games PR Director Nikita Putilin about the inspiration behind Rogue Trader. Mishulin had been playing a years-long campaign in the Rogue Trader tabletop RPG with other Owlcat staff, and with the studio’s success at adaptingPathfinderwith their CRPGsKingmakerandWrath Of The Righteous, they felt that Rogue Trader would be a perfect fit for their style.
After pitching the title to Games Workshop and getting it approved, Owlcat spent years developing Rogue Trader. During the early part of development, the rest of the team started their own campaigns in the tabletop RPG to build up their setting knowledge and find inspiration.
Warhammer 40,000 is a vast setting, so as much as Mishulin and his team might have liked to have included more of the galaxy’s species and factions, some didn’t make the cut. Mishulin’s personal favorites, the T’au Empire, and Putilin’s beloved Orks are not present in Rogue Trader.
While Rogue Trader is clearly a title created by and for fans of the setting, Mishulin and Putilin hope that CRPG fans of all stripes will enjoy the game. If you’ve never experienced the grim, dangerous world of Warhammer 40,000 before, Rogue Trader is shaping up to be one of the best ways to dive in.
