Owlcat Games' debut adventure in the Warhammer 40,000 universe was one of my favorite games of 2023. It was also one of the buggiest games I played that year.
In my review of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, I noted that writing and gameplay made for a fantastic experience, but that running into bugs was extremely frequent, to the point backtracking through saves was necessary at times.
Now, several months after it launched, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is in a much better state, with a number of mammoth updates that cleaned up issues I and other players encountered. With this experience now under the team's belt, I had the chance to talk with executive producer Anatoly Shestov, who provided insight into the team's reaction, development process, and even some ideas of what to look forward to in the first big expansion for the game.
Reacting to a tsunami of feedback
In his own words, Shestov is in charge of "shenanigans" at Owlcat Games, ensuring that the team meets deadlines, budget constraints, and player quality expectations. He explains that when the team was shipping the game, they knew there would be some bugs to address (as the majority of games often have), but everyone was taken aback by the sheer number of bugs being reported.
“I was one of the ones who made a decision that the game was ready to be launched," he says, adding that the team had done a "tremendous amount of smaller fixes" in the lead-up to launch, as well as noting that “We made some mistakes, and we’re acting right now according to that.”
Like the studio's prior work, Rogue Trader is a massive role-playing game, and it's entirely possible to spend over 100 hours playing through without seeing every last quest or detail that's available. Shestov says that this very nature of the games Owlcat works on means it's easier for bugs to not show up during internal testing.
“The other side of the coin is to not commit until you test 100% of everything, to wait until every piece of the picture is in its place. It’s possible to make a game in that way, it’s just the game that will be made will be 10 times shorter [than our games], in terms of playtime, in terms of the choices, in terms of the options," he says, adding that "Sometimes it backfires, but sometimes it brings us love because there is a unique feeling in our games. We do the things that we do because we feel they are important."
Sometimes it backfires, but sometimes it brings us love because there is a unique feeling in our games
Anatoly Shestov
Looking ahead, Owlcat isn't changing the types of games it's making, but the process is going to be refined as a result of this experience in order to make things hopefully go smoother in the future.
"We are risking a lot. We are not going to stop, we will continue to risk. But we will allocate more budget to QA, we will plan more precise timing and we will make sure the content we are delivering to players is better quality and more polished,” Shestov says.
Outside of fixing myriad issues that blocked quests or required players to reload saves, Owlcat was also taken aback by the sheer number of players who enjoyed simply burning through the game with outright broken builds.
“We were surprised — and it was useful feedback— that one of the core feelings that our audience want to receive is a feeling of overpowered power fantasy. Broken builds that one-shot bosses…they’re loving this,” he explains, adding that when some of these options were removed during some rebalancing patches, it created a "shitstorm" of "people telling us we destroyed their pristine fantasy."
A far more innocuous surprise for the team? The popularity of Marazhai, a Drukhari officer who can join the player's team under certain circumstances. His appeal has been far broader than Owlcat expected, and Shestov says that Marazhai is "popular as hell" as a romance option.
Shifting gears, I asked Shestov about what's in store with Void Shadows, the first of two major paid expansions planned for Rogue Trader. Void Shadows adds around 15 hours of new story and quests and is woven directly into the main game. Void Shadows, appropriately enough, is all about life on board a voidship.
While the team wasn't able to explore as much of these vast spacefaring vessels as they would've liked, this DLC has provided the opportunity to add more depth to that aspect of the game.
“We didn’t touch every stone that needed to be touched,” he says. "A voidship itself is a tremendous city with its own factions, its own nations, its own people living inside it.”
One of the central mysteries in Void Shadows is the threat of a Genestealer Cult, a malignant force that threatens to consume and indoctrinate. Genestealer Cults are usually found on planets like dense Hive Worlds, and their odd appearance here is by design.
“Of course there is a huge mystery around how a Genestealer cult ended up on a voidship, not on a given planet,” Shestov says, though he chooses not to say more in order to avoid spoilers. Genestealers can actually be found in one particular side quest in the main game, but they were originally supposed to be seen a bit more. Shestov explains that as development progressed, it became necessary to cut a few quests and locations in order to better polish the majority of the game, which led to all but one quest involving the Genestealers being removed.
“That’s why we have some pieces of the game that are good, that are compelling, but they only happen one time. Any game developer can look at that and say ‘Guys, that’s not a wise use of money and time,’” he says with a laugh. “And we agree, we’d better use it more. But there is always a time in any development process where you need to press the button.”
Void Shadows also introduces the character Kibellah, a Death Cult Assassin who is also a possible companion and love interest for the player. When I asked Shestov why they wanted this particular type of character to be the newest companion, he's again a bit cagey in his pursuit of avoiding spoilers but does note that the team wanted someone who felt natural given the setting for the expansion.
“When we envisioned what kind of story we wanted to tell, the next step was to envision what kind of companion will emerge from such a story," he says, adding with a chuckle that they didn't intend to add a character simply because they liked the miniatures.
I asked if the team felt comfortable with going deeper into more convoluted aspects of the setting with the expansions, instead of worrying about making things accessible to newcomers. Shestov explains that it's the team's policy to always ensure that a game appeals to both newcomers and veterans alike.
“That’s not about the DLC or the main game, that’s our studio policy. Our internal approval team, who make the final decision about whether or not we’re ready to ship something to players, has people are deeply familiar with Warhammer as well as people who didn’t know what it is at all,” he says. “In our [development] team, like 99% are familiar with Warhammer. Over half are deeply familiar, playing different games or reading books.”
It’s always a leap of faith. But when you’re doing it with a team of 100 people, and with such a fanbase, it’s twice as big a leap of faith
He goes on to explain that the internal approval team consists by design of several different people with varying levels of experience, some being hardcore players and others that have never played a role-playing game before. All of this is to be sure that someone who is only interested in the story can still have an enjoyable experience on a lower difficulty setting.
“We’ve been making RPGs for more than five years. We’ve delivered three games in that genre, and we understand that different aspects of that genre touch players. We always try to find a way to deliver to every aspect of the audience," he says.
To close our conversation, I asked if there was anything he could share about Void Shadows before it arrives.
“We allowed ourselves to be a bit more dark. A bit more thrilling,” he says, adding that, in some ways, it’s a “big experiment” for the studio and that he’s looking forward to player feedback.
“It’s always a leap of faith. But when you’re doing it with a team of 100 people, and with such a fanbase, it’s twice as big a leap of faith.”
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is currently available on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, Mac, and PlayStation 5. Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader - Void Shadows is slated to arrive on Sep. 24, 2024,and requires the base game in order to play.
