Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and How It Learned From Kingmaker’s Rocky Start

Pathfinder: Kingmaker was a huge hit but it didn’t launch without a hitch. We sat down with Owlcat Games’ creative director, Alexander Mishulin, to talk about how their take on the beloved tabletop franchise has evolved from Kingmaker to the wildly supported Wrath of the Righteous. 

For those that may not be as familiar with Pathfinder’s tabletop roots, Wrath of the Righteous is one of the most noteworthy campaigns seen in the Pathfinder world. It’s rich with lore, which can get complicated fast, but more than that is it’s incredibly layered. Building a game effectively takes time and a keen understanding of the goal and resources, something that Owlcat Games’ is known for. So how exactly did Kingmaker’s troubles impact Wrath of the Righteous? 

“Launch of the Pathfinder: Kingmaker was rocky with quite a lot of problems throughout the game,” Mishulin tells us when opening up on how Kingmaker feedback influenced their latest venture. “And we spent a lot of time fixing the game and bringing it to the state it should be at the moment of the release. All those fixes, alongside with some additional features and improvements we combined in the release of the Enhanced Edition of the game.”

“This time we are striving to make sure this does not happen to the release of the Wrath of the Righteous. We have increased our QA efforts and set aside more time for polishing. But those are quite generic answers and approaches (nevertheless we did that), but we also made other more technical and specific solutions. We made a special tool to make sure that every choice and consequences are addressed to, and we also implemented the bot, that is continuously running through the current build of the game, and reporting all issues it encounters.”

Tech issues, as unfortunate as they are, will always be a factor in the development process, especially so as technology continues to grow and expectations rise. While Kingmaker absolutely hit the nail on the head with staying true to what makes Pathfinder truly magical, the launch was riddled with issues that many considered to be game-breaking. While those issues were eventually resolved, it’s always great to see developers take those lessons and apply them to the road ahead. 

The Kickstarter campaign is almost done for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous! You can learn more about it here, while also pledging to nab some sweet rewards, before it closes on March 11. With almost 2 million dollars raised, it’s easy to see why the hype is real for the next phase in Pathfinder’s glory!