‘Pathfinder: Kingmaker’ Tame the Stolen Lands and Build Your Kingdom in This New Computer RPG

Finally! Pathfinder the computer-based role playing game!

Yesterday, Owlcat Games announced their partnership with Paizo to create Pathfinder: Kingmaker an isometric party-based computer RPG set in one of Pathfinder’s fan-favorite adventure paths, Kingmaker.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker will be developed by Owlcat Games with narrative design by Chris Avellone, who has worked on a variety of RPGs over the years, including Fallout 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker will take players on a tour through the infamous Stolen Lands, the dangerous and turbulent territories well known within Pathfinder fandom. The computer RPG will revisit familiar characters and well-known locations of the series’ lore as well as treat players to brand new adventures, deadly foes and unforeseen twists and turns.

Kingmaker was known not only as a party-based adventure where characters defeat foes, gain treasure hordes, and grow in power, but as a campaign where the characters help create settlements and grow them into kingdoms. I am excited to see how the kingdom building game-play and party-based adventuring meld together in the final game.

Not much is known about the Pathfinder: Kingmaker yet, but there’s a session at PaizoCon 2017 to discuss it. I also anticipate we’ll see some news at the PaizoCon Banquet. Further, in one of Paizo’s best kept secrets, apparently a demo is available to be played at PaizoCon! I’ll be sure to relay anything I can find out between my gaming sessions.

What I can glean from the announcement and Owlcat’s website though is that Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a “story-driven single-player computer RPG,” and from one of their images it appears to be a real-time rather than turn-based game.

As a Pathfinder player, Chris Avellone is invested in and a fan of the setting, “I’m a Paizo fan, and a Pathfinder fan. I like the setting, the art style, the adventure paths, the card game, and the iconic characters. I’ve enjoyed playing Pathfinder with my friends (we used to be part of an Ocean’s-11 style game), and I’ve enjoyed the comics, the world, and the overall setting,” I hope Chris can bring the feel of exploration, and wonder that I feel every time I sit down to play the table-top RPG.

While this is the first game for Owlcat Games, the team behind Owlcat has experience with such games as Heros of Might and Magic V, Allods Online, and Skyforge. Hmm, with all that MMO experience, maybe Pathfinder: Kingmaker will evolve out of single-player.

Besides the sense of adventure, discovery, and epic combat I get from the Pathfinder RPG, I hope that Pathfinder: Kingmaker mimics table-top Pathfinder by providing the near infinite customization of characters. There’s such a flavorful variety of characters available in the Pathfinder RPG, both story-wise as well as mechanics-wise.

Kingmaker was one of the first Pathfinder table-top RPGs I experienced with my kids. With many fond memories, I look forward to experiencing some of the same locales and scenarios, and to see the story unfold in a different way.

I’ll be at PaizoCon 2017, and on or soon after Memorial Day weekend I’ll relay what more I discover from the news-rich banquet, the information session, as well as… playing the actual game!

Shiny!

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