Rogue Trader’s post-launch patches have paved the way for Void Shadows

At launch, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader was a tough game to recommend, even though it’s a lovingly crafted adaptation of the Koronus Expanse that builds on the lore I love from tabletop RPGs. The initial conflict drew me into the story, and I stuck around to help my companions achieve their goals. But there was an opaque leveling system that required constant math homework, the second half of the game was buggy, and there were some clunky, awkward bits. Thankfully, developer Owlcat Games has continued to work on Rogue dealerand patching it regularly. Now, with the game’s first expansion in sight, I’m excited to see how the story will look with additional layers of long-term polish.

Rogue dealer is both vast and dense; it’s so complex that even Owlcat lost track of all the different interlocking scenarios. “There were some sequences and scenes that behaved in a way that we didn’t expect. It was almost a scientific discovery to understand how things would or wouldn’t work together in combination,” said Anatoly Shestov, executive producer of Rogue dealer.

Running players through the campaign provided Owlcat with far more data than internal playtesting. Since the game’s original release, Owlcat has released 10 patches, fixed thousands of bugs and implemented quality-of-life updates, and made adjustments to UI art, difficulty, boss design, character development, story issues, and more. This process paved the way for the game’s first expansion: Empty shadowsAccording to Shestov, Empty shadows is inspired by mechanics the team wanted to tackle before launch, but ultimately had to put on the back burner.

“The ship itself, we wanted to open it up to more points of view. We wanted to tell different stories about the people who live there, the difficult choices that are made there,” Shestov said. “We felt that this was a compelling story about things that happened before and now in the story with your crew.” This is an aspect that is lightly present in the main game; at one point, my Lord Captain descended into the bowels of her void to conduct a nascent union negotiation.

Empty shadows features a new companion and potential love interest, Kibellah, a Death Cult Assassin. The Assassins are a relatively deep cut in Warhammer 40K lore. Everyone in the player character’s crew is a misfit in some way – except for Abelard, my beloved right-hand man and steadfast seneschal – but Death Cult Assassins are deeply ritualistic killers, unleashed upon the God-Emperor’s enemies after mental conditioning, gene-crafting, and elite training. Kibellah joins the rest of the crew, allowing for new squad configurations.

As for the new enemy, players will be tasked with discovering and defeating a Genestealer Cult infestation on their ship. These massive warships carry crews the size of cities, and Genestealers delight in getting into these situations where they can slowly take over more and more of the population until they can finally start a revolution and summon their dark alien masters to consume the assembled humans and their habitat.

“A core part of our development ideology is that we never try to do medium stuff that’s good for 100 percent of the audience,” Shestov said. “To be edgy, we try to pick some pointed elements that will poke someone and engage them as deeply as a good story.”

According to Shestov, the expansion of the Void will be very different from the settlements in the main story. As the story progresses, the Rogue Trader—the player character—will claim more of the worlds of his dynasty. These worlds will fall under the Rogue Trader’s authority, and the player can return to upgrade them and give instructions to the regents who rule in their stead during the events of the main campaign. Empty shadows-specific additions will be more of a narrative chapter, focusing on exploring the ship and meeting its inhabitants.

Image: Owlcat Games

This includes more officers, who can give advice to the Rogue Trader, and new environments to explore. With a little hard work, players can even increase the space combat power of their voidship by adding a huge hangar. There will be around 15 hours of new content integrated into the main campaign. All of this is a good excuse to return to Rogue dealer and enjoy the fruits of all those previous patches that paved the way for this new content. Just like Baldurs Gate 3multiple runs of Rogue dealer are recommended to see all aspects of each companion’s story and to try out different decisions in the main story.

Empty shadows is scheduled for release on August 8. A second expansion, Lex Imperialisis scheduled for later this year. According to Shestov, Owlcat will continue working on Rogue dealer for at least one year after the launch of Shadows of the voidThere is still plenty of life left in the Lord Captain’s voyages and I’m curious to see how it all turns out.