Something's been missing from the recent spate of 1990s role-playing throwbacks: Dungeons & Dragons. While games like Pillars of Eternity certainly have their influences, the actual D&D rules of classics like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale haven't shown up in a major way. That's why it's a pretty big deal that Pathfinder--a popular adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons' 3.5 edition--has joined with video game developer Owlcat Games to make Pathfinder: Kingmaker.
This means we'll get a traditional fantasy world filled with dwarves, trolls, and half-elves; character classes like barbarians and clerics; and attributes like dexterity and constitution. Combined with an isometric game engine of pausable real-time tactics, just like Baldur's Gate and Pillars of Eternity, and a bunch of text and dialogue options, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker should, at the least, feel like comfort food for the RPG fan.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker does promise more than just comfort, however. Its biggest advantage may come from the "Kingmaker" part of its title. See, Pathfinder is famous for having "Adventure Paths" which are official multi-part stories that can run for months, and take player characters from being pathetic level one newbies to level 18 demigods.
So Adventure Paths come with an existing storyline and fanbase, and enough scope for an epic computer role-playing game (roughly 40 hours, Owlcat says, with up to twice that if you want to complete all the side quests). Kingmaker is one of the more popular Adventure Paths, with the interesting premise of your character becoming the baron of the newly reclaimed "Stolen Lands," and trying to rebuild them and defend against external forces.
For Owlcat Creative Director Alexander Mishulin, one of the advantages is that it creates a kind of kingdom-level layer to the game, where the players make strategic decisions and this manifests as the kingdom being "like another companion" in the game. I got to see a bit of this in the section of Kingmaker that I was able to play; it began with my Baroness being asked where to assign my too-few guards in the new lands, as well as dealing with unruly diplomats from powerful neighbors.
With many RPGs, semi-strategic decisions like these tend to be linear event chains. That's not entirely the case here as, according to Mishulin, a series of events have the potential to happen that will affect your barony, but when they fire might change randomly, and therefore have different effects. If this works, and the kingdom layer does end up having significant effects on the overall game, that should be a big benefit to Kingmaker's appeal.
Owlcat has also brought on well-respected games writer Chris Avellone to help tell the story of Kingmaker. Avellone is famous for his work on classic RPGs like Planescape: Torment and Knights of the Old Republic 2, which are highly regarded for their complex character and faction interactions. That's something they want to do well in Kingmaker as well, which I saw a bit of as I played.
Most every choice I made trended my character down a path of the D&D alignment system. Be nice to someone, lean toward Good, do something for the fun of it, get a few points down the Chaotic path. This is combined with specific decisions that can change party members' relationship with you. In one quest, my party met a helpful mage who was performing experiments on live trolls. His info was necessary for my quest, but one of my party members threw a fit about his torture of sentient creatures. If I didn't order him to release his prisoners, our relationship would be damaged.
In many RPGs, a situation like that could be avoided by leaving party members whose ethics the player might disagree with behind, but that's another aspect of Kingmaker with a slight twist. According to Mishulin, your companions don't exist only when bring them out of storage for adventures, but, if not joining you on the campaign trail, will stay at home in charge of your castle. So if you take all your Evil companions out so that the Good ones don't yell at you for being a creep, those do-gooders may end up ruining your dastardly plans by their acts at home.
Like much of the rest of Pathfinder: Kingmaker, what seems to be a comfortable, generic RPG trope has the promise of a little extra depth. Almost everything I asked about in terms of story seemed to have a layer beyond what I expected--the advantage of having years of tabletop playtesting, perhaps. If these different aspects of Kingmaker can coalesce into a dramatic whole, this could be special.
If these different aspects of Kingmaker can coalesce into a dramatic whole, this could be special.
That's important because from what I played, Kingmaker doesn't appear to be breaking new ground in the isometric RPG genre. If you've played one of these, from Baldur's Gate to Tyranny just a few months ago, you probably know the drill. If not, these are real-time with pause tactical games, where combat starts, your characters all charge off into the fray, and you hope that you don't accidentally nuke your barbarian with a stray fireball.
I didn't get the chance to see much of the inventory (it wasn't finished), which can definitely be a problem in games where you manage six characters at once. The combat seemed slightly slower-paced than its peers--there were moments where I found myself waiting for the ticks of a D&D "turn" to go through. On the other hand, the party AI didn't end up casting any accidental fireballs that ruined my combat, which is a major positive. (It's entirely possible that there's hidden depth to the combat system that I didn't have time to get to, and isn't easily explained like narrative is, of course.)
Pathfinder: Kingmaker is aimed at a release roughly nine months from now. Fans looking for a deep, traditional RPG will want to keep an eye on its progress.
Rowan Kaiser is a contributing editor to IGN. Chat with him on Twitter at @RowanKaiser.
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