RPG studio Owlcat Games has no plan to move away from RPGs as the game developer continues past its 10thanniversary.
Since its formation in 2016, the studio has crafted some of the best CRPGs around with Pathfinder: Kingmaker, its sequel Wrath of the Righteous, and Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. Right now, the studio is working on its next CRPG, Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy, alongside its first action RPG, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn.
As the studio continues to expand its breadth of RPG development, co-founder and creative director Alexander Mishulin confirmed that Owlcat Games is committed to being an RPG studio forever. While the studio may float between CRPGs and ARPGs as it moves from project to project, role-playing will always be the core of the studio.
“We will continue to make CRPGs because we love them,” the co-founder told PCGN. Addressing the move to action RPG for The Expanse, they continued: “we do not want to become stagnant. We will be trying different approaches for our RPG games, trying to find the best possible fit for the idea of the game.”
As for the studio’s commitment to developing RPGs, it’s simply: Owlcat was formed specifically to make games in that genre. The founders love RPGs, they hire developers who want to work on RPGs, and they look at every new idea as an excuse to explore what can be done within the genre, no matter if the budget is small or large.
“We want to create the best possible RPGs, we like them, we play them, we get inspired by them and we want our games to feel the same, that we would enjoy them ourselves and hope that they will inspire someone else to create even better ones,” Mishulin said.
Right now, both The Expanse: Osiris Rising and Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy are in playable alpha states. For players who burn some extra cash on the titles, they can already be played in very unfinished versions. We’ve played The Expanse, and it’s clearly an early version, but the RPG already shows some promise, and it’s shaping up to be the best Mass Effect game since Mass Effect 3.
As for the future of Owlcat, it seems likely that the studio will balance new CRPGs and new ARPGs as it continues to expand. So far, the studio’s CRPGs are all made in the same underlying engine whereas its ARPGs will be made with Unreal Engine 5. The studio have clearly thought about this split, definitely more so than other studios in the past, and the future is very exciting for those who are already fans of the studio’s quite brilliant, albeit buggy, output.
