Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader Closed Alpha Live, Previews

Those of you with a pre-order for the Developer’s Digital Pack or the Collector’s Edition of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader can now take part in a closed alpha test of Owlcat Games’ next CRPG and experience one of the game’s five chapters, visiting several distinct worlds in the process.

Here’s more on that:

About Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader closed Alpha

Players will visit a number of worlds in the Koronus Expanse, where they can aid the Emperor’s loyal subjects, punish heretics, or even show treasonous sympathies and abet renegades. The Alpha features one of five chapters of the game.

Among other signature locations in the Koronus Expanse, brave explorers will be able to plot a course to:

• Footfall – a void station populated by pirates, religious zealots, and common workers. A dangerous place even for a Rogue Trader, but one ripe with opportunity!
• Dargonus – the hive world capital of the player’s empire and the Rogue Trader’s family seat
• Janus – a jungle-covered agri-world where the player will decide the fate of a conflict between a rebel group and the local governor
• Kiava Gamma – an industrial world where dark and strange things are happening

Among other signature locations in the Koronus Expanse.

Players will travel between worlds through the warp, repel pirate attacks in open space, explore new planets, and found colonies – all from aboard the Rogue Trader’s majestic voidship housing thousands of subjects and crew members.

On their journey, the Rogue Trader will receive assistance from their companions – their loyal Seneschal, a Tech-Priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the ship’s Navigator, an Interrogator of the Inquisition, a Battle Sister of the Adepta Sororitas, a smuggler, a diviner psyker, and even a xenos. However, it is up to the player to decide if they want to build solid relationships with their crew, help resolve conflicts between party members, or leave them loose!

You may also be interested in checking out some rather positive alpha previews:

WCCFTech:

While still early in development, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader shows great potential. Creating a compelling yet unique role-playing game set in the world created by Games Workshop is no easy thing to achieve, but Owlcat Games is already proving to be up to the challenge. If the game feels this good to play at this stage, it will be very interesting to see how good it will be when its final release launches in the future.

Polygon:

Aside from its mastery of combat, this alpha shows that Owlcat intimately understands the setting’s quirky approach to storytelling. Rogue Trader is full to bursting with voluminous tracts of lore that slowly, irrevocably reveal a version of humanity poisoned by its own dogma. It’s a compelling read, one that tracks well even alongside Games Workshop’s own Black Library novels. It’s a lot of text, to be sure, but while I would have preferred full voice acting I’m not sure that the writers would have had as much leeway to expand and embellish the narrative in quite the same way if they were paying actors. The copy is strong — especially considering this game is made by an Eastern European team headquartered in Cyprus.

PC Invasion:

But if there’s one thing that the CRPG inherits from the TTRPG, it’s the impeccable sense of style. While it’s boorish to talk about the way items and character models look this early in the development cycle, we can already tell that the developer understands that cyclopean architecture is what makes the Warhammer 40,000 fans drool. Massive stone statues aboard space stations, evil spikes erupting around corrupted power generators, propaganda posters generously papering the walls — it’s all there.