Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Traders, the first classic-style computer role-playing game set in Games Workshop’s legendary sci-fi universe, was released in the wild on Wednesday. Developer at Owlcat Games (Pathfinder: Kingmaker) have provided rabid fans who have already pre-ordered the game with an early alpha, and it has quite a bit of content to play around with.
But this isn’t just a tech demo. Owlcat has shown himself to be at his best, delivering a double whammy of quality original narrative and delicious isometric ultraviolence. It’s still very early to be excited about a game with no release date but fans of 40K and the original Stand out will want to keep this one on their radar.
In 40K lore, a “rogue trader” is a swashbuckling merchant operating on the fringes of the human empire. But don’t expect to slip into the cloak of a rowdy seafarer fighting off gangs of marauding space pirates. Instead, you’re a member of the nobility, with a ship the size of a small town and thousands of minions to do your bidding. Her personal entourage is a group of highly skilled and eccentric humanoid warriors, and the goal is to blaze a trail of glory and enterprise across a dangerous galaxy.
How dangerous? In the first hour I spent playing the game, I experienced total party kill, my party of six heavily armed combatants becoming steaming heaps of meat on a dusty floor. And that was just a low-level engagement against a few street thugs.
I reloaded and hopped back into my save game, determined to make it out alive. What I found was an intricate array of synergistic character abilities, not unlike something you’d find in a boutique Japanese RPG. Each character in the party seems to have a role, even if sometimes that just hides behind a crate and buffs the characters with the biggest guns.
And the weapons themselves behave exactly as you would expect. Bolter rounds explode with a loud bang, sometimes knocking enemies back and knocking them to the ground. Flamethrowers shoot across the battlefield, setting enemies on fire. Friendly fire is a big problem and making sure all your troops have clear backstops and open fields of fire is key to their survival.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24276000/Warhammer_40_000_Rogue_Trader_Screenshot_2022.12.07___21.46.34.73.png)
By the end of an hour, I had two snipers taking out targets from afar, two melee-focused characters covering my right flank while a heavily polished space nun leaped from cover, wreaking havoc on half a dozen goons each round. Meanwhile, my own rogue trader was prowling the map, hunting for the leader of the gang. It was an extremely satisfying tactical experience with features and graphics that rivaled recent genre hits, including wasteland 3
Aside from his mastery of combat, this alpha shows that Owlcat fully understands the setting’s whimsical approach to storytelling. villain trader is chock full of vast tracts of lore that slowly and irrevocably reveal a version of humanity poisoned by its own dogma. It’s an engaging read that even does well alongside Games Workshop’s own Black Library novels. While it’s a lot of text, while I would have preferred full voice acting, I’m not sure the writers would have had that much leeway to expand and embellish the narrative in the same way if they paid actors. The copy is strong – especially considering this game was developed by an Eastern European team headquartered in Cypress.
There are many features I have yet to test, namely space combat and the trading system, but what I saw impressed me. That tiny taste of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Traders left me wanting more, and I haven’t been able to say that about many Alphas I’ve played this year.
