Pathfinder: Kingmaker Kickstarter Update, New Interview

The Kickstarter campaign for Owlcat Games’ RPG Pathfinder: Kingmaker is off to a great start. In the first 24 hours, the project secured 36% of its initial goal. Currently, the project is sitting at $265,292, more than halfway there. Enthusiastic about this, the developers at Owlcat Games have expressed their gratitude in their first Kickstarter update:

Our campaign has launched 24 hours ago and you have already pledged 36% of our funding goal. We are extremely happy and excited by your support and would like to thank you for believing in us!

If you want to help us even more, tell your friends about us! If you know people, who love Pathfinder, tabletop role-playing and CRPGs, let them know about our campaign. Our game will become bigger and better with every new fan we can reach – and you can help us achieve that goal!

Many of you were full of questions about game mechanics and their translation from tabletop Pathfinder into our game. We are preparing our next update right now, which will shed some light into some of these mechanics.

Sincerely yours, Owlcats

Additionally, GameSpot offers a new editorial-style interview with the developers, that also provides a brief preview of one of the game’s quests. Here’s an excerpt:

While the Pathfinder tabletop series is quite popular, it’s still in its infancy compared to heavy weights like Warhammer and Dungeons & Dragons. First published in 2009 by Paizo Publishing, Pathfinder features a more varied, diverse environment to explore; giving players more incentive to experiment and explore at their leisure. Though the foundation of Pathfinder is based upon a modified version of the 3.5 edition of Dungeons & Dragons, using an Open Game License, the series went on to find its own identity compared to other high-fantasy franchises, helped in part by occasional sci-fi trappings. During the presentation, creative director Alexander Mishulin spoke about his love for Pathfinder, and how ‘out there’ it can go.

“It’s a great universe, we played it a lot on the tabletop, there is a place for anything, not just the usual western fantasy, but a variety of kingdoms, ancient egyptian kingdoms, arabian kingdoms, it just goes everywhere,” stated the Mishulin. “There’s also places where barons fight giant robots, and these robots have lasers, all that sci-fi stuff. There’s even an adventure where you go against increasing cold and winter, and then you find yourself on another planet, and then a time-travel aspect comes in and you find yourself in early 20th century Russia and essentially fight against people with rifles and tanks. It’s all really ridiculous stuff, and while those extreme aspects are very niche and won’t be picked up in our game, this shows how big Pathfinder is–a lot of smart stories about being a king, being a rebel, and you can just enjoy the heck out of it.”

[…]

During the presentation, the developers showed off one of the early quests players can take part in. Taking place at the start of Chapter 2, things pick up after taking out a group of bandits. The party rests at a settlement, which allows the main character to interact with their companions and take part in quests stretching across an area of the Stolen Lands. In one quest, the party is presented with a fairly complex moral choice; should they side with a human mage kidnapping and torturing dangerous trolls for experimentation? Or should they release the troll and fight against the corrupt mage? In CRPG fashion, the core storytelling is just as important as the core combat and exploration, and your choices will define your character’s outlook and interactions with others. Though this is the first video game release for Pathfinder, the Kingmaker storyline is already an established arc from the tabletop game, which the developer took some liberties with the source material.

“Because Kingmaker is built on a specific adventure path that a lot of people hold dear, it’s important that we select parts of it and go ‘you know what, this is stuff people really liked, they talk about it a lot, and we should do service to those elements in the actual computer game’,” said Avellone. “But at the same time, we want to see if there’s ways for us to move around and change some circumstances for NPCs. […] There’s also freedom in the way the adventure paths are structured that allows us to present the players with different opportunities, and that gives us a lot of breathing room to add new events and storylines because how it’s structured.”