After Pathfinder and One of the Best Warhammer 40,000 Games Ever Made, Owlcat’s Next Step Is to Top Them All — and It’s Grown to 600 People to Do It

Owlcat began life as a small developer, as so many do, but with plenty of expertise on the team. 2018’s Pathfinder: Kingmaker, its first game, was successful, so the natural thing to do next was to make a bigger and better sequel. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous followed in 2021. Another Pathfinder might have followed, but Owlcat took a significant step forward with 2023’s Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, a sort of Baldur’s Gate 3 set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe game, rougher around the edges than Larian’s masterpiece, but no less meaty and with just as good writing. It’s a fantastic role-playing game, with plenty of choice and consequence. Many feel it’s one of the best Warhammer 40,000 video games ever made. It might even be the best.

Now, Owlcat has two announced games in production: Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy and The Expanse: Osiris Reborn. Dark Heresy continues Owlcat’s impressive run of cRPGs, but The Expanse is something of a departure for the studio, a third-person action RPG made in the Mass Effect style. And so, what started as 15 people working together on Pathfinder is now a whopping 600-person development studio making multiple big projects. Owlcat has grown enormously