The team from Owlcat Games held a Reddit AMA dedicated to Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Enhanced Edition that arrives later today with a wealth of new content and changes. It was attended by a number of developers such as the Creative Director Alexander Mishulin, Lead Narrative Designer Arseniy Krymov and more.
As a reminder, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous releases for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X / S via backward compatibility) as well as Nintendo Switch via the Cloud on September 29. The Enhanced Edition of the game will become the standard version for the console release, and also will be available for all PC owners of the game on the 29th of September for free.
Edit: The Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous console versions as well as the Enhanced Edition are available now. You can learn more, including the patch notes of the major update it introduced, here.
Over a few hours, the Reddit users got to ask developers all kinds of questions – from gameplay elements to narrative beats to the plans for the future.
Check out the list of the most interesting answers below!
- The team has plans and ideas regarding new Mythic abilities, including those for armor users. However, there is no set date yet;
- Reducing the weight of goggles from the hefty 4lbs is being considered;
- No plans for a post-game expansion for now;
- Buff macros are not a part of the Enhanced Edition – the developers consider buffing to be a natural part of the game and the combat experience;
- New Mythic Paths are highly unlikely;
- It is hard to decide exactly what counts as content for in-game romances and how to estimate it;
- Ratfolk are currently not on the list of plans but there are a lot of requests;
- Swarm-That-Walks and Devil Mythic Paths received some new dialogues and decisions, no new content for Gold Dragon; some “normal” Mythic Paths like Azata got new options as well;
- In Season Pass 2, one of the DLCs will continue the story of Through the Ashes while another will include more content for the Commander. More details about the rest will be announced at a later point;
- Millions of gold by the end of the game is a problem that developers recognize;
- No new portraits coming in EE;
- Initially, there were about 14 Mythic Paths in consideration, at least one for every Alignment and some unusual choices for late game Mythics as well. The ones that developers could recall are Phoenix, Neutral Nature and something akin to Super Golem;
- Owlcat Games currently cannot provide any information regarding future games;
- The console version of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous received a lot of work on optimization and the team is prepared to closely monitor the performance at launch;
- No romances with currently existing but unavailable companions planned (Woljif, Regill, Nenio);
- Buffing poisons is being considered, perhaps will have a corresponding Mythic feat;
- There will be secret boss encounters for some of the Mythic Paths added in EE;
Here is a long answer about game balance from Owlcat Games Creative Director Alexander Mishulin. It also addresses nerfing or fixing of certain abilities:
“It is a really interesting question that can possibly lead to a lengthy discussions. There are several important aspects contributing to a particular decision including if the particular ability works similar to the tabletop experience, how we planned to modify it (if we wanted to) in our game, how widely it is used and so forth. Some abilities due to the bugs in implementation provided too big bonuses without any particular thinking or a decision making, it is just press a “cheat” button and it is good to go. Those we usually fix.
Some abilities require some build creativity or change combat experience, requiring certain tactic from the player – those we usually do not fix if it is leading to nerfing (and i do understand that it is quite difficult to prove, as such “not fixes” never reach the players and never mentioned in the patch notes). Sometimes we introduce new abilities to compensate the change or give other mechanical entities (classes) for example access to the similar options – for example Bolster metamagic was introduced in the Wrath of the Righteous for this particular reason.”
- EE does not have new spells and abilities, it’s focused around UI QoL features and story elements;
- Director’s Cut/Definitive Edition is not directly in plans but is not impossible;
- Reforging (“transmog”) and armor painting is in the EE;
- The developers are steadily rooting out all inconsistencies and bugs from classes, archetypes and spells. It’s a slow process, but it has come a long way since release;
- Blood Kineticist fix is in the works;
- It is unlikely that developers will expand existing romances, but the addition of new ones is possible;
- Mods will not be available to use on consoles at release;
- Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is developed by a separate team and doesn’t affect WotR in any way;
- EE is compatible with old saves;
- Gamepad support is in EE;
- Co-op feature was considered hundreds of times, the team really wanted to implement it but the amount of effort and budget to make it work would be staggering;
- Most of the major new content for the Mythic Paths appears in chapter 5 or later;
- No major changes to the Crusade mode in EE;
- Some of the things included in the EE consist of: new epilogues, photo mode, a number of QoL UI improvements such as inventory search, pet health bars, combat log scrolling, detailed combat log and multiple other minor features, as well as new quest for Legend and multiple interactions for other mythic paths;
- The Gold Dragon didn’t make it into the budget frames;
You can participate in the discussion yourself here. If you have found yourself interested in the more amorous topics of the AMA and are looking for another RPG with romances, consider checking out our list to see if anything catches your attention!
