In some ways, Owlcat Games' choice to follow Rogue Trader with a Warhammer 40k: Dark Heresy CRPG was a no brainer. Being part of the Imperial Inquisition - an esoteric secret police force with extreme power and theoretically limitless authority - is an intoxicating prospect. Besides, there's a proven audience: the Dark Heresy tabletop RPG has been delighting 40k fans, under varying editions, for almost 20 years. But when I talk to one of those fans - Anatoly Shestov, Dark Heresy's exec producer at Owlcat - a potential drawback comes to my mind. Isn't the Inquisition a bit… complicated?
In 2023's Rogue Trader, we play as one of the titular, empire building privateers. We're handed a ship, a crew, and a warrant of trade, then the game points at the galaxy and says 'go play'. We face challenges, of course (some of those boss fights are fiendish) but the core concept is forging your own destiny. We're not a cog in the Imperium's machine; we're outside the machine, doing our own thing. It's an easy sell.
Our role in Warhammer 40k: Dark Heresy is wildly different. True, Inquisitors and their warbands can operate outside of Imperial law, using powers and resources other Throne-loyal Warhammer 40k factions can only dream of. But the Inquisition itself is a mind-boggling tangle of constantly shifting power structures, multi layered scheming, and calculated posturing where even senior Inquisitors' actions are constrained - not by rules, but by the politics of power and influence.
At the outset of Dark Heresy, we're an Inquisitor's junior acolyte, near the bottom of the pecking order. We're empowered to kill, maim, and generally make a mess if need be, sure - but only in direct service of our mission orders. We have no greater autonomy, no agency to choose our own path or pursue personal goals (at least, at first). We are very much a cog(g) in the Imperial machine.
I put it to Owlcat's Anatoly Shestov that these constraints might make the game's narrative setup less inviting for some players; that it might even put some off. He's unequivocal: telling an authentic Inquisition story is more important to him than universal appeal or selling more copies. And to do that, he wants us to properly experience the role's constraints as well as its power - if you're feeling like a plot armored wunderkind, something's gone wrong.
"There are a bunch of stories in a different media of some really genius teen or child who just got into a situation where he's needed," he tells me. "He's a chosen one, he's a blessed one, he's a sole survivor, stuff like this."
"From Neo in The Matrix to Harry Potter, where there's a world making you do something, it's understandable," he says. "But when you're 30 plus, when you're grown up, you need different kinds of stories."
"You need stories where you can get away any time, but you decide not to. Where it's your decision to stick with things that are not ideal, with things that are mostly broken, and to provide whatever necessary to make them continue at least one more day."
"That's the message of being in the Inquisition," says Shestov: "doing what you trust needs to be done, not surviving, not running away, not playing as 'ha ha, I've got freedom!'"
"No, you don't." he says. "No grown up person has freedom! We have obligations, we have things we must do, we have dependencies!"
"I sound like an old man, sorry," Shestov says, chuckling. "But to speak about such things, there's nothing better in the whole Imperium than the Inquisition."
"It's like a satirical mirror of the grown up world", he muses, "where you do things not because you like them, but because you need to do them".
"That's one of the unique things that the Inquisition allows us to explore narratively and in other aspects of design."
I admit, the idea that Warhammer 40k Inquisitors represent an idealized concept of adulthood, with its balance of power, freedom, and independence on one hand, and duty, obligation, and accountability on the other, is a wild take that caught me completely off guard.
One might argue it comes off a tad too reverential towards men and women who, let's remember, frequently torture people to death for a living. But it's a hell of a lot more insightful than "stompy man good, alien bad", which for the longest time was about the best we could hope for when it came to Warhammer 40k games.
Dark Heresy, by comparison, is promising a messier, more nuanced gamification of life in the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, where your personal power and freedom grows unevenly over time as you make complex, costly decisions.
"It's up to the player to decide how they feel around different things, around different choices, how they feel about these dilemmas, that there will be plenty of through the game," says Shestov - "and we will try to make these dilemmas interesting and morally compelling".
Those key decisions will shape which Inquisitorial factions gain the upper hand, as well as where you sit among them as you progress through the story (and the ranks), Shestov tells me. It's a compelling promise: that, like Inquisitors themselves, you'll make your own rules, and live with them.
"These are rare types of stories", he says. "It's a rare type of mood and atmosphere you can potentially wrap your game around. And I feel we'd all be happier if there were more such stories."
This, for now, is the third and final part of my interview with Owlcat's executive producer Anatoly Shestov. There's so much we still don't know about the new Dark Heresy, but I've seen more than enough to be at least as excited about this as I am about the likes of Dawn of War 4 or even Total War Warhammer 40k. Because the stories are half the sandwich, for me.
What's your take? What do you most want to see in Dark Heresy? And what pitfalls are you desperately hoping Owlcat sidestep with the game? Come join the free Wargamer Discord community and let me know - we're a friendly old lot, honest.