"Initially we thought it will be too difficult," Alexander says, "kind of cramming two games together." Owlcat have an advantage, however, as the studio was founded by former members of Nival Interactive, responsible for strategy games like Heroes of Might & Magic 5. The concept suggested a tactical battle layer where you're essentially playing a wargame. It's an adventure path that elevates players into field commanders of a crusade in the Worldwound, a land overrun by demons. That made Wrath of the Righteous a strong contender. "You can see your characters not only as friends and traveling companions, but also as people who are governing with you, making tough choices."
"We like when the game has some kind of strategic layer to it because it allows us to introduce our companions, our characters, into that different perspective in addition to your usual RPG experience," Alexander says. Owlcat focused on less odd adventure paths, favoring those that lend themselves to management mechanics, like Kingmaker did. It's "too weird" he says, breaking my heart. Initially we thought it will be too difficult, kind of cramming two games together Alexander Mishulin "Reign of Winter is the adventure path we sometimes joke about," says Alexander, "because by the end of the Reign of Winter you are returning through time and space to the Russian Empire back in the start of the 20th century, I guess it's something like 1910? You're running across a train with people shooting at you and headless Cossacks chasing you and whatnot." It's gloriously demented: Doctor Who with swords and a chicken-hut TARDIS. They leave Golarion behind, traveling first to a planet called Triaxus and then to Earth, where they visit Siberia and fight Rasputin. I have to ask though, is Reign of Winter (opens in new tab) one of them? Maybe the most out-there adventure path, in Reign of Winter the players get hold of the infamous witch Baba Yaga's magic hut, and then use it to cross space and time. Owlcat has a shortlist of favorites they'd like to implement. The adventure paths are varied too, telling stories about all kinds of characters, from pirates and thieves to runelords and detectives. "You can just point to any part of the world and something is happening there," Alexander says. He mentions some places the videogames haven't visited yet, like Galt, "all this flair of French Revolution" with "guillotines that chop the heads off enemies of the state and suck their soul into the blade." Elsewhere there's "Cheliax with those hellknights" and a "whole cult devoted to devils." Kingmaker was adapted from one of them, and so is the follow-up, Wrath of the Righteous, meaning that although it's also set on the shared world of Golarion it's not a direct sequel.Īlexander Mishulin, creative director of Owlcat Games, says Golarion is a setting worth returning to thanks to its varied locations. Paizo built Pathfinder on D&D's open-licensed third edition, and created a huge catalogue of campaigns for it called adventure paths. "And this tail is quite stable, which is really surprising."įor Owlcat's second game, the studio returned to Pathfinder-a tabletop ruleset created by Paizo, who published the official D&D magazines Dragon and Dungeon for five years. "Games have a peak in sales in the beginning, in the first half a year, and then maybe a short tail of popularity and sales in a year or two, but what we see with Kingmaker is a steady wave of new people coming in," says Oleg, who describes it as a long-tail seller.
0 kommentar(er)
