Well-written romances with interesting characters can significantly level up the story of an RPG. However, as explained by Owlcat Games – the studio behind games like Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.
Who are the Owlcats? Owlcat Games is a studio founded in 2016, headquartered in Cyprus, focusing on the development of classic role-playing games. Notable Owlcat games include the two Pathfinder games Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous (short WotR).
With Rogue Trader, Owlcat Games even released a role-playing game in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The studio’s current project also takes place in this world and is called Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy. It’s already playable in an alpha version, but there is still a DLC for Rogue Trader.
Here you can see a trailer for the “Game of the Year” edition of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous:
Almost all female romances in WotR were going to be cannibals
What is the studio’s stance on romances in role-playing games? On a scale from Obsidian (low focus on romances) to Larian (high focus on romances), Owlcat is more toward Larian. In each of their games, there are several characters with whom players can have a romance.
In Pathfinder: Kingmaker, you can even enter a real polyamorous relationship – creating believable romances is important to the team. In a blog post, the studio goes a bit deeper into how they write romances. This post is quite extensive, and you can read it in full on Steam.
“A good romance is always directed at the person whose heart it is meant to reach,” the developers explain in this blog entry. Therefore, they consider for whom a romance is intended while writing – ideally, there are options for different preferences. “We always keep in mind that some people will love it, while others will hate it,” it continues.
The only alternative would be an average character “for everyone and no one,” say the developers. Now and then, such a “standard romance character” is also urgently needed – otherwise, players would sooner or later think they are surrounded by crazy people.
This problem occurred to the developers at the beginning of the production of Wrath of the Righteous. Because when trying to avoid such an average character, they went a little overboard with the females in the game.
At one point, we realized that we had three female romance characters who were all cannibals.
As a result, they rewrote the characters: For Arueshalae, a succubus on the path to redemption, all references to cannibalism were removed. She ultimately became the “nice average girlfriend,” but not entirely.
For the druid Camellia and the spider mutant Wenduag, it was sufficient to differentiate them from those aspects. This way, the differences between the two characters could be better highlighted.
Can a game have too many cannibalistic waifus? Feel free to share your opinion in the comments. Owlcat Games not only develops role-playing games themselves but also takes on the role of publisher for smaller studios. For example, for Another Angle Games, which is currently developing a cRPG set in Japan: The creators of Rogue Trader let you fight for the future of Japan in a new RPG on Steam
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