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There's Going To Be a 'Pathfinder' CRPG

Owlcat Games has announced that they're bringing Pathfinder into the realm of the isometric world.
Images courtesy of Paizo

Paizo's Pathfinder role-playing game, after almost a decade of existence, has finally entered into the rarefied world of the computer RPG (CRPG). For a certain group of people, that particular word in relation to a robust world like that of Pathfinder might raise some eyebrows in anticipation.

Developers Owlcat Games has announced that they're bringing Pathfinder into the realm of the isometric world, joining a veritable renaissance of CRPGS in form of newly-developed games like Pillars of Eternity, Torment: Tides of Numenera, and Tyranny and the work that Beamdog Studios has done remastering (and adding content to) the Baldur's Gate games.

Joining the team of "developers who still remember how it was to make your game run on 32 Mb RAM" (so says their website) is RPG veteran Chris Avellone, who is credited as a "Narrative Designer" for the game. Avellone, who has a key role in classics like Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment as well as recent games like this year's Prey, seems to be the serious stamp of approval that this development team and Paizo itself are serious about this being a major entry into still-niche field of isometric role-playing games.

With no release date and no gameplay footage, it's hard to know what the Pathfinder CRPG might be like. Pathfinder, which is "an evolution of the 3.5 rules set of the world's oldest fantasy roleplaying game," is fairly complex, and combat in the tabletop version of the game is tactical and rules-heavy. It's possible that this game leans more into the feel and flavor of the very deliberate Divinity: Original Sin territory. Time will tell!