Discussion WH40K: Rogue Trader

[GodisanAtheist]

Surprised we don't have a topic about this game:

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader Gamplay Trailer Debuts at PC Gaming Show

Award-winning studio Owlcat Games is thrilled to reveal the first gameplay trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader - the first cRPG set in the legendary grim darkness of the far future of Warhammer 40,000. Set to be released on PC and consoles, the game features turn-based combat and is being...

www.techpowerup.com

It's basically the 40k game I've been waiting my entire life for: a proper crpg in the 40k world. I figured it would have beena game centered on the Inquisition as that imperial institution really lends itself to the standard CRPG tropes, but a Rogue Trader works pretty well and given who is developing it I suspect there will be some heavy "Empire Management" elements built into the game on top of the core CRPG elements so from that perspective it fits quite well.

My big worry right now, the complaint I've heard most about the Pathfinder games, is that it might end up just being too much damn game or might require an expansion pack or two to really flesh out different elements (the empire building).

Excited none the less and hope this game succeeds so we get more narrative driven experiences in the 40k world, which is what I really want.

 

[Starbuck1975]

I hope they have space hulks and underhive environments to explore. Even though space hulks were heavily influenced by Aliens and underhive by Judge Dredd, they also work well for the original rogue trader concept of exploration and sci-fi dungeon crawling.

 

[Stg-Flame]

I'm fairly hesitant to look into anything with the WH40K title since we've had almost a nonstop slew of cheap indie games come out which mostly felt like your standard cash grab. I'll look into this one as I do love the 40K universe but I'm not getting my hopes up after trying some of the other games we've seen on Steam over the past decade.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I'm fairly hesitant to look into anything with the WH40K title since we've had almost a nonstop slew of cheap indie games come out which mostly felt like your standard cash grab. I'll look into this one as I do love the 40K universe but I'm not getting my hopes up after trying some of the other games we've seen on Steam over the past decade.

-TBF its being developed by the same studio that did the Pathfinder games, so its not being handed off to some no-name studio with only mobile games/freeware under its belt or something. I know Pathfinder is not everyone's cup of tea (honestly I've been dissuaded from playing it because it sounds like it has too much going on for my tastes between kingdom management and the standard crpg experience) but I don't think I've really heard any serious complaints in terms of the game's quality.

I'm cautiously optimistic on this one. the Warhammer brand tends to be a terrific value add when in the hands of a more capable studio (Relic until DoW3, Creative Assembly) and a huge crutch/shovelware/money grab when its a no-name.

Owlcat has some pedigree and frankly running a little Rogue Trader fiefdom sounds like its right up their alley.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Not far from release now (December) and things are still pretty quiet.

I did find the content warning on Steam to be "chuckle worthy", guess we'll be getting full frontal 40K:

You may see depictions of blood, gore, dismemberment, torture, slavery, and kidnapping in this game. It also contains textual descriptions and mentions of abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, sexual assault, self-harm, suicide, cannibalism, and miscarriage. Player discretion is advised.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

And it's out. AAAAAANNNNDDDD it's unfinished. Like not even "ran out of money, let's rush the ending" unfinished but straight up Act 4 just has quests that never end, bugs galore, wildly unbalanced combat encounters, etc etc etc.

The good news is Acts 1 & 2 are excellent and extremely faithful to the lore, the management meta is pretty good, ship combat is solid.

They just shipped 2/5ths of a game.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

And it's out. AAAAAANNNNDDDD it's unfinished. Like not even "ran out of money, let's rush the ending" unfinished but straight up Act 4 just has quests that never end, bugs galore, wildly unbalanced combat encounters, etc etc etc.

The good news is Acts 1 & 2 are excellent and extremely faithful to the lore, the management meta is pretty good, ship combat is solid.

They just shipped 2/5ths of a game.

Seems like it’s going to get patched & fixed, I am waiting on this one to come down in price.

 

[Fenixgoon]

And it's out. AAAAAANNNNDDDD it's unfinished. Like not even "ran out of money, let's rush the ending" unfinished but straight up Act 4 just has quests that never end, bugs galore, wildly unbalanced combat encounters, etc etc etc.

The good news is Acts 1 & 2 are excellent and extremely faithful to the lore, the management meta is pretty good, ship combat is solid.

They just shipped 2/5ths of a game.

were both pathfinder games buggy on release? i know they had pretty solid support afterwards as far as patches and DLC. hopefully owlcat can bring Rogue Trader up to par. i didn't like the management aspects of PF:KM/WoR but otherwise they were solid RPGs

 

[WelshBloke]

I'm enjoying the early stages of this.
The camera is a bit of a struggle and and the skill trees are incredibly obscure.

The game is hilariously unoptomised though. It runs really badly for an isometric CRPG!
I mean I’m getting >100 FPS with everything on max but thats with a 6950xt and a 5800X3D at 3440x1440 which is fine but I was fully expecting to have to put a frame rate limiter on but I’m not even hitting my refresh rate!

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I'm enjoying the early stages of this.
The camera is a bit of a struggle and and the skill trees are incredibly obscure.

The game is hilariously unoptomised though. It runs really badly for an isometric CRPG!
I mean I’m getting >100 FPS with everything on max but thats with a 6950xt and a 5800X3D at 3440x1440 which is fine but I was fully expecting to have to put a frame rate limiter on but I’m not even hitting my refresh rate!

Takes a lot of power to properly venerate the Emperor.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

You have to sacrifice 10,000 psykers to your GPU to get it to run properly...

 

[DigDog]

i find it really puzzling that the minds at Games Workshop have somehow come up with THIS .. really?? Rogue Trader??

Back in the year "oh so many years ago" i basically lived inside a RPG store and the first edition of 40k came out, titled "Rogue Trader". It contained a short description of what you read in the game, that ..
"highly skilled agents of the Imperium are given a ship and a contingent of marines, and then trusted to act in the interest of the Imperium, but essentially being free agents". Think the East India Company.

.. and then, NOTHING for another 200 pages, but exclusively talking about a tabletop miniatures game that has nothing to do with the Rogue Traders, if not having the Space Marines previously described. It was basically just flavour text.
Later issues of WH40k dropped the Rogue Trader bit completely.

And Games Workshop tried as hard as it couild to forget they ever were a RPG company, focusing exclusively on their miniatures market; in case you DON'T know, GW miniatures are *ridiculously* expensive for being little blobs of cast metal, and they make an absolute fortune. I think the post-tax profits for 2023 were in the region of $80 million. Their revenue is reported as $470M ..

So, i find it kinda weird that they have gone full circle and are now back to their RPG beginnings. Because, see, if you read the old White Dwarf issues - GW had their own magazine - the idea was that you had a PnP RPG where you would roleplay the Rogue Trader, and then when a battle was fought, you would do this with miniatures. NOT similar to what using miniatures would be in a Dungeons And Dragons game, but rather the miniatures meant to represent a large scale of troops rather than 1:1 model-to-troops. This is common in tabletop miniature games, where a single miniature model is meant to represent a certain number of the same troops.

And then GW were like nyaaah, no, from now on 1 space marine miniature equals 1 space marine, and forget we ever mentioned having to roleplay as a Rogue Trader.

 

[WelshBloke]

i find it really puzzling that the minds at Games Workshop have somehow come up with THIS .. really?? Rogue Trader??

Back in the year "oh so many years ago" i basically lived inside a RPG store and the first edition of 40k came out, titled "Rogue Trader". It contained a short description of what you read in the game, that ..
"highly skilled agents of the Imperium are given a ship and a contingent of marines, and then trusted to act in the interest of the Imperium, but essentially being free agents". Think the East India Company.

.. and then, NOTHING for another 200 pages, but exclusively talking about a tabletop miniatures game that has nothing to do with the Rogue Traders, if not having the Space Marines previously described. It was basically just flavour text.
Later issues of WH40k dropped the Rogue Trader bit completely.

And Games Workshop tried as hard as it couild to forget they ever were a RPG company, focusing exclusively on their miniatures market; in case you DON'T know, GW miniatures are *ridiculously* expensive for being little blobs of cast metal, and they make an absolute fortune. I think the post-tax profits for 2023 were in the region of $80 million. Their revenue is reported as $470M ..

So, i find it kinda weird that they have gone full circle and are now back to their RPG beginnings. Because, see, if you read the old White Dwarf issues - GW had their own magazine - the idea was that you had a PnP RPG where you would roleplay the Rogue Trader, and then when a battle was fought, you would do this with miniatures. NOT similar to what using miniatures would be in a Dungeons And Dragons game, but rather the miniatures meant to represent a large scale of troops rather than 1:1 model-to-troops. This is common in tabletop miniature games, where a single miniature model is meant to represent a certain number of the same troops.

And then GW were like nyaaah, no, from now on 1 space marine miniature equals 1 space marine, and forget we ever mentioned having to roleplay as a Rogue Trader.

The thing is that pretty much all the humans in the 40k universe have no free will and are cogs in the machine of the Imperium. It would be pretty dull for a RPG to be that on rails.
Rogue traders are great for role playing as their 'job' is to explore and they are a law unto themselves.
Plus it's easier to understand their roll for someone new to the 40k universe. There's them or a bunch of different flavours of space fascists.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Yeah RPG options for 40k are basically Rogue Trader or Inquisitor.

You could make other stuff work, it just wouldn't be particularly compelling.

 

[Fenixgoon]

You have to sacrifice 10,000 psykers to your GPU to get it to run properly...

bruh has no tech priests to appease the machine spirit

 

[GodisanAtheist]

bruh has no tech priests to appease the machine spirit

-All praise to the Omnisiah

 

[Fanatical Meat]

The thing is that pretty much all the humans in the 40k universe have no free will and are cogs in the machine of the Imperium. It would be pretty dull for a RPG to be that on rails.
Rogue traders are great for role playing as their 'job' is to explore and they are a law unto themselves.
Plus it's easier to understand their roll for someone new to the 40k universe. There's them or a bunch of different flavours of space fascists.

Dude you have a charter written by the emperor more than 10,000 years ago written using the emperor’s blood as ink.

As far as other games content doesn’t have to stay on target, games workshop varies it a lot. Could easily have a Astra Militarium shooter or some sort of shooter in a hive city maybe a block war like Judge Dredd had. Crap hives are based on Dredd why not.
Tech Priest traveling to different locations looking for parts of lost tech or crap have the finale be him finding an STC.

There is stuff to do and I expect more in the future since 3D printing will devastate their business model. They have to find other things to sell.

 

[WelshBloke]

Dude you have a charter written by the emperor more than 10,000 years ago written using the emperor’s blood as ink.

Yup. And that's why rogue traders are ideally suitable for a RPG!

As far as other games content doesn’t have to stay on target, games workshop varies it a lot. Could easily have a Astra Militarium shooter or some sort of shooter in a hive city maybe a block war like Judge Dredd had. Crap hives are based on Dredd why not.
Tech Priest traveling to different locations looking for parts of lost tech or crap have the finale be him finding an STC.

But none of that is going to be true to the 40k setting!
If there's a riot in a hive city the reaction from the Imperium would overwhelming and utterly unfun to play.
Tech priests might work but only in a very narrow scope of adventure!

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Yup. And that's why rogue traders are ideally suitable for a RPG!

But none of that is going to be true to the 40k setting!
If there's a riot in a hive city the reaction from the Imperium would overwhelming and utterly unfun to play.
Tech priests might work but only in a very narrow scope of adventure!

I get it, really I am just saying GW doesn’t exactly stick to established lore so why not branch out regarding games.