Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Interview @ Twinfinite

HiddenX

HiddenX

The Elder Spy
Staff Member
Original Sin Donor
Original Sin 2 Donor
Supporter
Joined
October 18, 2006
Messages
19,989
Location
Germany
Twinfinite interviewed the creative director of Owlcat Games - Alexander Mishulin - about Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous:

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Interview: New Gameplay Changes, Better Tutorials, & More

There have been many isometric RPGs in recent years that have echoed the design of the genre's late-1990s heydey, but none of them are quite like Owlcat Games' Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

Designed with a philosophy that adheres more strictly to the pen-and-paper ruleset it's based on, Kingmaker is an extremely faithful video game adaptation of a TRPG. This has won over a substantial fanbase of passionate players, though it's also guilty of isolating others as a result of its often daunting depth and lack of solid tutorials.

Now, the studio is planning an even grader sequel called Wrath of the Righteous, but they're intent on learning from past mistakes and producing something that's both a complete TRPG experience and more accessible to newcomers.

To get the gist of how Owlcat Games is approaching the development of Wrath of Righteous, Twinfinite spoke with the studio's creative director, Alexander Mishulin.

Alex: While Pathfinder TRPG players would have been in their element, Kingmaker wasn't the most accessible isometric RPG at launch. Are there plans to make Wrath of the Righteous easier to understand and less intimidating this time around or are you committed to designing Wrath of the Righteous first and foremost around the TRPG ruleset in the same way?

Alexander Mishulin, Creative Director at Owlcat Games: While making Pathfinder: Kingmaker two of our main goals were to expand the pen-and-paper experience to the CRPG, and also to revive the great old school hardcore CRPG experience, the one we grew up on ourselves.

While we succeeded at it and received good feedback from the hardcore audience, we understand that the huge Pathfinder system ruleset was left tricky and unclear in many ways for the new players unfamiliar with the tabletop game.

We want to fix that in Wrath of the Righteous, to make it more approachable to the players, to explain the rules better and make situations that are difficult (in terms of rules) more easy to understand. And of course, we are leaving space to think and explore, and providing opportunities to learn for those of the players who want it.

To make it so, we decided to develop not just some special tutorial, but a whole new learning curve system that spans through the whole game and helps the player in a number of ways, and is on hand anytime they need it. We are making this system non-intrusive, so the players who prefer a bit more old-school approach can play in the way they love so much.

[...]
Click to expand...
More information.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
19,989
Location
Germany
Maybe it was known before, but from the answer in this interview it seems clear there will be some management layer in the new game as well. Not bad news for me.
 
Joined
Oct 6, 2018
Messages
1,117
Andrew23 said:
Maybe it was known before, but from the answer in this interview it seems clear there will be some management layer in the new game as well. Not bad news for me.
Click to expand...

The Wrath AP has three "management" thingy. So pick your poison.

One chapter has you managing an army resources while traveling with the army but it can be delegated to an NPC in the AP that was confirmed to be in the game and last two weeks in-game time max and is never reused again.

That chapter also include managing army combat (aka mass combat, it's a mini-strategy game in Pathfinder rules) toward the end of the chapter. Owlcats wanted to have it in Kingmaker as it was used in a chapter in that AP but didn't have the time to do it so they went with sabotage. The AP has rules if players don't want to do mass combat though.

The next chapter has some town reconstruction has a minor feature (that focus on economy weirdly, as the area isn't known as being prosper). It's the only chapter that is somewhat "open world" too. Going by another interview, they are making the video game more focused on that chapter so I expect the town reconstruction to be the game main management features.
 
Joined
Oct 13, 2007
Messages
7,313
Imo accessibility wasn't a problem in the first one. The problem was the imperfect knowledge you have at the start of char gen without reading and studying EVERYTHING. This might lead to the feeling your char is not as good as it could be or that you will regret a decision later on.

It is possible to build extremely powerful multi-class chars and anyone who wants to play that can find descriptions online. Although, I think it is better to just start with something interesting and than decide the further path with each level-up. It might not be the perfect char in the end, but you should be able to survive.
 
Joined
Feb 21, 2015
Messages
2,168
Location
BW, Germany
I don't think the interviewer played Kingmaker - not enough c&c? I don't think so lol.

Also, how can D:OS "trascend" D&D genre when it's not even based on D&D?
 
Last edited:
purpleblob said:
Also, how can D:OS "trascend" D&D genre when it's not even based on D&D?
Click to expand...
Journalism 101 there is always a favored RPG they shill for clicks.:biggrin:

I still remember Disco Elysium getting called the future of the RPG genre.:lol:
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,315
Location
Spudlandia
purpleblob said:
I don't think the interviewer played Kingmaker - not enough c&c? I don't think so lol.

Also, how can D:OS "trascend" D&D genre when it's not even based on D&D?
Click to expand...

“Transcend” also means to surpass. So it doesn’t have to have anything to do with D&D. If the author of the article believes DA:O surpasses D&D in anyway the the terminology would be correct.

Having said that even with as much as I liked DA:O, I’d disagree that it transcends D&D.
 
sakichop said:
“Transcend” also means to surpass. So it doesn’t have to have anything to do with D&D. If the author of the article believes DA:O surpasses D&D in anyway the the terminology would be correct.

Having said that even with as much as I liked DA:O, I’d disagree that it transcends D&D.
Click to expand...

Then I'd disagree that D:OS series transcends D&D but I guess its difference in opinions.
 
Of course, half of the questions are useless or stupid. Why do they even make interview with niche market developer if they dont know what to ask?
 
Joined
Oct 6, 2018
Messages
1,117
purpleblob said:
I don't think the interviewer played Kingmaker - not enough c&c? I don't think so lol.

Also, how can D:OS "trascend" D&D genre when it's not even based on D&D?
Click to expand...
You can definitely transcend something without being a part of it. Plus the context of that word, in the interview, is: "RPGs like Divinity that have managed to transcend the D&D genre somewhat and find new audiences"

The first definition listed in Merriam-Webster for "transcend" is: to rise above or go beyond the limits of.

I think all they meant is that D:OS managed to transcend the normal popularity (sales) limits of D&D games and attract a much bigger audience. I doubt they even intended to comment on the relative quality or greatness of the games.

Sadly, I think games with highly complicated character systems like faithful implementations of D&D 3.5+, Pathfinder, and also Pillars of Eternity 2, will always have a low'ish ceiling in terms of potential audience/sales. I think what D:OS managed to do was keep a lot of the "feel" of these games (even going a bit further in some areas like bringing back turn-based combat), while streamlining the character systems so that The Masses could approach it all much easier.

I much prefer the more involved character systems like in PF:K or PoE2 personally, but I think historically the problem has been that it's rough to create an epic RPG within the budget dictated by the sales ceiling that you know you'll have in a game of that kind. But somehow, Owlcat managed to create one of the biggest RPGs ever (at least in terms of my play hours) even within that framework. And that's the true breakthrough of PF:K. I assume it's because they're in Russia where wages are much, much lower than where any of these other games have been created.
 
Joined
Sep 26, 2007
Messages
3,466
I think past years showed quite clearly the market for group-based, isometric, complex cRPGs is niche market. Which means it has its limits. But at the same time it means it should be rather easy to target it.

Im afraid some developers just dont get it. Instead of taking advantage from the fact that they have the audience just in front of them, they often try to cater to some more casual audience they have no proof it even exists. And, voila, at the end they can find themself with product that no-one is interested in. Because the existing customers are pushed away by design decisions made for casuals and casuals were never interested.
 
Joined
Oct 6, 2018
Messages
1,117
That is one of my biggest worries over the next game. The main reason I have gotten so hooked on PK is because it is complex, because it gives so many options, because there are so many secret and hidden ways to do things. No one should be able to do everything and be all things. I have never liked that philosophy in games at all. It removes choice and consequence, it makes things bland and meaningless. I don't even like the retrain option they added but at least you can disable it so you don't even see it in-game.

Statements like this are worrisome:

We want to fix that in Wrath of the Righteous, to make it more approachable to the players, to explain the rules better and make situations that are difficult (in terms of rules) more easy to understand.
Click to expand...

Options are good though and PK at least lets you really customize a lot of things.
 
Joined
Jun 4, 2008
Messages
3,970
Location
NH
Well that was a polemic set of responses that didn't really answer much.

From my knothole, if you're already familiar with a game system, then tutorials just serve to get in the way. I'd rather see them create a separate tutorial scenario or a series of introductory videos, then leave the main game suitable for the hard core gamer.

P:K was an enjoyable experience once they fixed the multitude of bugs and provided an auto management system for the Kingdom. They deserve full credit as well as high expectations for this follow-on. I look forward to seeing what they put together.
 
Joined
Mar 22, 2012
Messages
5,527
Location
Seattle
While we succeeded at it and received good feedback from the hardcore audience, we understand that the huge Pathfinder system ruleset was left tricky and unclear in many ways for the new players unfamiliar with the tabletop game.
Click to expand...

LOL

So, they basically made this game for the "hardcore audience", cynically put ?
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,946
Location
Old Europe
I enjoyed Pathfinder Kingmaker but had two issues with it.

First -- and after decades of playing hundreds of PC games this is a first for me -- the game was too long. Isometric is not my primary jam and I became tired of the game, not even finishing the final chapter. The story/characters/environment/etc. were interesting so that wasn't the problem, unlike some other games I get tired of part of the way through.

Second, and more importantly, while I enjoyed the management aspects of the game I didn't enjoy it enough to want to spend the time and energy on learning the ins and outs without documentation. I don't generally enjoy hidden black box mechanics but if I can learn them without documentation then that's okay, but I didn't enjoy the management aspects of this game enough for that. As a consequence, it was literally game over at times and I had to modify the settings to turn off management so that I could continue playing, which was very feels-bad.

I know that some consider it negative spoon-feeding to the masses but I would have wanted documentation on what I could do to help with the management aspects of the game, even if that didn't include detailed numbers for it.
 
Joined
Oct 23, 2006
Messages
845
NFLed said:
I enjoyed Pathfinder Kingmaker but had two issues with it.
First -- the game was too long.
Second -- while I enjoyed the management aspects of the game I didn't enjoy it enough to want to spend the time and energy on learning the ins and outs without documentation.
Click to expand...

Agree with you. They could have removed some of the weaker content (duplicated areas, fed-ex style tasks and shortened the final chapter) and the game would of been even better for it. I felt the same about the management aspect. I loved the sim-city bit where you build the buildings but the sheer number of tasks (problems and opportunities) just created a lot of busy work which wasn't particularly enjoyable for me as well.

I think Wrath will likely be far better in this regard and the "management" part is secondary to the campaign and the army building isn't likely to be as involved i.e. I hope it is focused on recruiting generals (etc) and organizing training and suppliers.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
3,116
Location
Sigil
Alrik Fassbauer said:
LOL

So, they basically made this game for the "hardcore audience", cynically put ?
Click to expand...

Depends on what hardcore audience means. Always a small segment of customers that thinks a product belongs to them and somehow that their feedback is worth than others' feedback. They usually are quite vocal.

Sometimes, devs go their way when they find it fit(this discharges devs from taking responsibility as they know they've got themselves a defensive line to praise the evolution) sometimes they dont but do not forget to credit the hardcore audience for their contribution. The mere idea they influenced the product's evolution is enough to satisfy them.
 
Joined
Mar 29, 2011
Messages
6,265
I dont get this labeling. Im fan of isometric RPGs and complex mechanics. Its probably my preferred genre. So I guess that makes me hardcore fan. Suppose its also wrong for some reason because being hardcore fan is automatically considered unreasonable and toxic these days.

Funnily, games like this seems to offend some people by its own existence, because there is neverending line of comments demanding how this design belongs to past and how it should be changed and re-designed. Similar thing happens in threads of games with simple or (god-forbid) pixelart graphics.

Luckily, no need to pretend there are only 2 options, between toxic hard core fans, who are raping other internet users and between mainstream casuals is still enough room, where normal people can fit.
 
Joined
Oct 6, 2018
Messages
1,117
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom