Rogue Traders, if you don’t know them, are human explorers and merchants in the 40K universe. They’re also the stars of the very first edition of Warhammer 40,000 back in 1987, although this Rogue Trader CRPG is based on Fantasy Fight’s Rogue Trader tabletop RPG from 2009. “We’re huge fans of Rogue Trader in its Fantasy Flight variation," Owlcat’s creative director Alexander Gusev told us when we spoke to him about the project earlier this year. “By the time we pitched this idea to Games Workshop, we were already playing 3 campaigns, two of them in Rogue Trader, and one a Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader Hybrid.” As Rogue Traders, the game has you flying about the galaxy on a spaceship via a map, before you touch down on different planets for on-foot shenanigans. This is a part of Warhammer 40K universe that hasn’t yet descended into “only war”, so while there’s plenty of combat by the looks of things, you’ll also be able to talk to the monsters. When combat does break out, it’ll be turn-based rather than real-time with pause. Although the video above is technically “gameplay”, I personally won’t be happy until I’ve seen some footage laden with UI elements and dialogue. It’s not really in-game until you can see action buttons and dialogue trees, is it? Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader doesn’t have a release date yet, but there are more screenshots on Steam.
