Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader's rough launch turned Owlcat into "Vietnam commandos"

Rogue Trader is easily my favorite Warhammer 40k game. While most eyes will meander over to Space Marine 2 or the Dawn of War franchise, as a sucker for CRPGs and a hopeless Baldur's Gate 3 enthusiast, Rogue Trader was, in many ways, the perfect game for me. While it brings Games Workshop's grimdark setting to life in a way that's both authentic and accessible, it was marred with performance issues at launch, making it pretty hard to love no matter how hard you tried. Now, however, it's an essential Warhammer 40k experience, and one that I'd argue any story-driven RPG enthusiast should plow some time into.

While the Rogue Trader book hasn't slammed shut just yet, Owlcat's eyes are firmly placed on its upcoming turn-based RPG, Dark Heresy, which is set to be an edgy, gothic sibling. In a post-Gamescom interview with executive producer Anatoly Shestov, I ask what the team learned from Rogue Trader's launch, and how it plans to ensure that Dark Heresy avoids the myriad issues we discussed in our Rogue Trader review.

"It's a hard question," he says. "Inside of our studio, there are a lot of passionate people; a lot of people who make the games they want to play themselves. So whenever we encounter any challenges or anything that we can be better, we don't act like we're adults in game development; instead, we're like a Vietnam commando with a knife and a mission: 'I do it or I die.'

"We were more ambitious than it was practical to be [with Rogue Trader], and that's why we delivered a game that wasn't in its most polished state - not because we were eager to save some money on QA. No. It was months before the release that we decided that the fourth chapter needed to be redone. Usually you don't do such things in a proper development cycle, but the choice was either to deliver something with less bugs or less immersion potential, with less 'burning' things inside it. We, as a studio, decided to go [with more bugs].

"With Dark Heresy - and I understand it sounds stupid - we are more ambitious than we were in the Rogue Trader times," he continues. "From my perspective, the difference is that the team knows precisely what it wants to do and how they want to achieve it." Shestov tells me the team is also relying more on data to inform development timescales. "It's like 'I know you think you can make this boss fight in one week, but the proven data says that it will take you three weeks, not one.' That's why we're able to mitigate some of the difficulties from the previous production."

I watched Shestov play an hour of Dark Heresy at Gamescom this year, and I can confirm it's taking a few, to borrow his words, "leaps of faith." It's bigger, it's better, there's more detective work, and the combat system has leveled up tenfold. All in all it feels, to borrow Shestov's words once more, "ambitious as fuck," building upon everything that Rogue Trader did well and amping it up to 100. You can check out my full Dark Heresy preview if you want to learn more.

Dark Heresy is set to release in 2026, so we'll need to wait a little while longer to dive into what feels like Owlcat's most ambitious game to date. If you're looking for something a little happier to while away the winter nights, we have a list of the best space games that keep the interstellar part but ditch the grimdark. Or if Pathfinder is a little more your speed, we have a list of all the best fantasy games to play today.

Did you like Rogue Trader? Let us know over on Discord, and tell us who you romance because, let's be real, you absolutely romanced someone.