Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader beta brings CRPG goodness to the grimdark future

thesixthaxis.com:

There’s a few ways to go when grabbing a license from the Warhammer brand and spinning it into a video game. From direct adaptations of the turn-based strategy and tactics of the tabletop originals to more creative interpretations and action-packed adventures in thoroughly different genres, there’s a Warhammer game for pretty much everyone. Except for role players… However, Owlcat Games has aspirations to set that right with the first CRPG set in the grimdark 40K setting, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader.

The concept of rogue traders goes all the way back to the very first edition of Warhammer 40,000, which released in 1987 with ‘Rogue Trader’ as the subtitle, but was dropped for later editions as the tabletop game shifted toward larger scale warfare and away from more RPG roots. The rogue traders as characters were really fleshed out in 2009 with the release of the Rogue Trader tabletop RPG, explaining more of how they tie in with the Imperium of Man, or more specifically, how they can work outside of its totalitarian rules.

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader from Owlcat Games wholeheartedly embraces this setting from the very beginning – we’ve been hands on with a slice of the action as featured in the beta that launches today. The prologue starts off on a rogue trader’s voidship – a powerful Imperial frigate that will look familiar to fans of Battlefleet Gothic – showcasing the vast internal scale of these interstellar craft, their dark gothic architecture combined with technology that is archaic as it is futuristic. You’re brought there to potentially become the heir to this ship’s Lord Captain, but a mutiny takes hold aboard the ship and you have to rush to restore a semblance of order before they can disrupt the perilous