Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader review

12.01.2024 - 08:46 / pcgamer.com

What is it? Mass Effect but isometric, dystopian, turn-based, and not that much like Mass Effect.

Release date: December 8, 2023

Expect to pay: $50/£43

Developer: Owlcat

Publisher: Owlcat

Reviewed on: Windows 11, Ryzen 9 5900X, 32GB RAM, RTX 3080

Multiplayer? Online 6-player co-op

Link: Official website

We've just defeated a cult, foiled a plot, saved a world. A bureaucrat says the triumphant parade has already been organized. We'll get to ride a battle tank, and halfway it'll stop and a small crowd will mob us. It's all stage-managed. The mob has been carefully vetted, the bureaucrat explains. «Members of the military. Young people, attractive and physically fit. A few healthy children.»

At the end of the parade the heretic leader's body will be burned on a pyre. The bureaucrat asks if we'd mind handing the flamer to the governor for this part, as it would be a real PR coup for him.

In moments like this, Rogue Trader nails the dystopian satire of Warhammer 40,000's Imperium. There's a sidequest about document approval climaxing in a queue that some people have been waiting in for days, and which I can use my authority to subvert in underhanded ways. When I want people to know how important I am, I have a robot skull in a barrister's wig fly around announcing my presence and title. One of the entertainments at a coronation is just 'shooting prisoners'. 

When we wrote about our dream 40K games three years ago, my first pick was «A narrative RPG about a Rogue Trader». I got my wish, but the monkey's paw curled and it's been made by Owlcat instead of BioWare, and that means quality writing and depth balanced by questionable encounter design and overcomplicated systems. We'll get to that later on.

Rogue Traders are an ideal part of Warhammer 40,000 to make a videogame about. As a merchant/privateer/explorer in charge of a ship the size of a city with thousands of crew I'll never meet who live and die based on my decisions, a Rogue Trader is allowed to talk to aliens and skirt the edge of heresy in ways the average citizen of the Imperium isn't. You're free to navigate a deeply messed-up society without immediately being burned at the stake.

Instead, consequences manifest in a three-track morality system where the three values increase independently. You earn Iconoclast points for compassion, for pushing back against the Imperium's disregard for individuality. Dabbling in Chaos in return for power earns Heretical points, and zealously embodying Imperial values earns Dogmatic points.

This is perfect for Owlcat. In the Pathfinder games, which had D&D's alignment system, Owlcat tended to interpret Lawful alignments in a «we should kill goblin babies because they'll probably grow up evil» kind of way, which