The Grim Darkness of Humanity's Future
As I try to ignore the outside world, I've been playing Owlcat's Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader video game. It is pretty much the first time I have engaged with Warhammer 40K at all; if you asked me last month what I knew about 40K, it'd be:
- "SPACE MARINES?!?!?!"
- chainsaw swords
- they fight orcs i think
- I think there's something called a Tech Priest
- there's a God-Emperor
Some of my friends have been playing Space Marine 2 lately so they were talking about the setting, I'd gotten Rogue Trader in some bundle or another, and sometimes you really just need something to drown in as the universe crumbles. Plus I'm like, the CRPG guy to my friends. Back on Cohost a stranger straight up told me they were waiting to get Rogue Trader until they saw my take on it, which is a completely bizarre thing to think about, nobody's gonna say that to me anywhere near Bluesky.
So, naturally, I stopped playing it after three days to shotgun down Metaphor: ReFantazio. But now we're done with that and it's back to western RPGs, baby.
I'm a solid 40 hours into Rogue Trader, two major story planets into Act 2, which is your classic CRPG "here are three story planets you can do in the order you choose (but we kiiinda made the world map to push you into a certain order)" situation. Based on previous experience with Owlcat's Pathfinder games, this means I'm like, maybe approaching halfway? They make games too fucking long, man.
Despite having some combined like 250 hours in both of said Pathfinder games, I do not particularly like them. I have a general distaste for Pathfinder and its entire "what if DnD, but more?" setting and sensibilities in the first place, and both games adapted existing tabletop campaign books which meant they didn't exactly break any molds. Owlcat's original characters and writing tend to be extremely on-the-nose, which I just find a bit dull.
This is understandable given the context of what these games are. When the intent is to have some 100 hour game meaningfully react to your choices both mechanically and narratively, on a level as granular as your subclass or your chosen deity, then it might be impossible to not be on-the-nose. The Good options are saccharine and preachy while the Evil options are kitten-eating and moustache-twirling. They're trying to hit breadth, not depth, and that's fine even if it's not my preference.
I think this might be a better fit for them. My understanding of the setting at this point is that Warhammer 40K is intentionally maximalist, melodramatic, and unsubtle; Gee often compares it thematically to Judge Dredd, another dystopia setting from the 80s UK. I find that it's reminding me quite a bit of Dune (which I'm only familiar with via the films, including Lynch's), and of course it still feels steeped in DnD tropes. There are fighters, wizards, rogues, faction reputations, et cetera.
In Rogue Trader, instead of a Lawful-Chaotic / Good-Evil alignment matrix, there's three tracks:
- Dogmatic: violently racist and fascist
- Heretical: violently racist and anarchistic
- Iconoclast: nominally ethical and humane
Pretty much every time you pick an Iconoclast option, every character in the room looks at you as if you said "maybe squirrels should be able to vote", or possibly "I wash my Toyota Camry exclusively with 55-year single malt". In the God-Emperor's hallowed name, why would you do something so obviously stupid? A normal person would simply execute this slave's entire family for disrespecting someone of your station.
In this world of extremes, Owlcat can write their characters as flatly and straight-facedly as always and it kinda works. I still don't find it that compelling because I have to spent a fair amount of mental energy on just parsing all the lore terms, but it makes sense in context. Everybody is incredibly cringe at least slightly on purpose rather than by accident. My Battle-Nun party member would attempt to execute my unsanctioned psyker like six times no matter how much I tell her to stop because she's just that zealous about enforcing the God-Emperor's will and putting an end to all Heresy. That's just what they do here in 40K. Apparently.
I of course have never touched the 2009 Rogue Trader TTRPG, but considering how Owlcat handled Pathfinder I imagine this game is pretty faithful on the mechanical end. I like me a good grid-based tactics game, and so far the "lay all the buffs and extra turns on one dude and have them kill everyone" tactic has been doing just fine in 90% of situations. I hear it was even more busted back at launch; several buffs have clearly had "the target of this cannot be affected by it again for two rounds" bolted onto the end. Nary an encounter goes by that doesn't open with Cassia mind-controlling half the enemy team to one spot, blasting them with her stun cone attack, and then ordering Argenta to commence with the flamethrower.
There are some neat options I'm fiddling with. The Grand Strategist designates blocks of tiles as the Frontline, Backline, and Rear at the start of each battle which each give different buffs/debuffs and I think that's a cool way to live out that fantasy. My brain couldn't help but start thinking about how I might implement that in DnD or elsewhere. Meanwhile while in theory I'd like Operative and its ability to mark targets, in practice it feels a bit opaque and perfunctory.
The most entertaining aspect by far has been talking about what I'm doing in the game to my friends who do know what's going on in the setting. Sometimes they just say "haha, yep that's 40K baby" or sometimes it's "you have a what in your party?" The best instances are when I inspire a like, 10 minute rant/explanation about some (presumably) obscure lore thing that I've never heard about. It's not like I actually have any interest in 40K even at this point, but it's just nice to have my friends actually show interest in whatever stupid game I'm playing for once. It's rarer than you'd think.
We joke that I kind of incepted the idea of enjoying CRPGs into one friend group; two of them got Baldur's Gate 3 recently and one even played fuckin Pillars of Eternity of all things. But I also play these kinds of games very differently from them, and I don't think we enjoy them for the same reasons. Alas, I'm pretty sure the actual answer is just they all want to fuck vampire twinks or evil drow and BG3 let them facilitate that. Which hey, I understand, I played a Rune Factory or three. No judgement.
I'll check back in as I progress, but I'd say I'm enjoying Rogue Trader more than either Kingmaker or Wrath of the Righteous so far. See you again, folks.
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