A Kick for Kickstarters: Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter are no longer seen in the brightest light in certain internet corners, for somewhat unfair reasons. The number of unfinished projects and outright scams that managed to receive good funding has tarnished crowdfunding’s overall reputation. But it still deserves credit thanks to the number of developers that have used it to fund not only their own risky projects, but to revive largely-dead genres in the process.

One such genre is old school-style isometric western RPGs, which dwindled in number due the combination of PC games losing popularity and publishers favoring fully-3D action RPGs. But developers who wanted to make them realized that funding them through platforms like Kickstarter and Fig was the practical solution, which gave life to titles like Wasteland 2, Divinity: Original Sin, and Pillars of Eternity. The genre’s popularity has since fallen off again with the underwhelming performances of Pillars of Eternity 2 and Tyranny, both of which are from longtime RPG developer Obsidian Entertainment and weren’t crowdfunded. But they might — might! — be on the way back up again.

The campaign for The Wonderful 101: Remastered showed how suggestions that video game project crowdfunding was pretty much (read: not entirely) dead were greatly exaggerated, as it became the biggest campaign in a long time. There’s another campaign doing well compared to several others in recent memory, one for a new isometric RPG (yes, I was going somewhere with those paragraphs above): Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.

Wrath of the Righteous is an isometric RPG being developed by Owlcat Games, a successor to the Pathfinder tabletop game and, more directly, crowdfunded video game predecessor Pathfinder: Kingmaker. The overall reception to Kingmaker led to the team’s desire to tell another story in the game’s universe and to green light this project.

The game will let players choose from six Mythic Paths, involving the option to venture as either an Angel, a Lich, a Trickster, an Aeon, a Demon, or an Azata. The appearances will be different for each path, but more importantly, the Path chosen will lead to different outcomes within its non-linear story. Ten races will be available for character creation, and the avatars can be further customized with different abilities and spells. Five of the classes and one race will be new to this installment. These are the kinds of ideas only isometric western RPGs can afford to utilize, because modern AAA RPGs limit the amount of creativity allowed through budget constraints thanks to their high production values.

Owlcat openly admitted how they already had enough money to bring this project to life, which explains why it already looks polished from the gameplay videos and GIFs. But they’re pursuing crowdfunding because they want to create a larger experience. It costs more money and resources than they had on hand to make a game in which, for instance, the world notably changes based on the player’s actions, something that can differ depending on what kind of character is chosen. They wanted to fully realize their vision for the project, and given how it’s performing, their intended audience overwhelmingly agreed with their intentions.

The developers asked for $300,000 to expand the project’s scale, a solid idea given the amount backers have pledged thus far. It’s raised over $1 million as of this writing, more than three times the amount they asked for, with a whopping 26 days remaining in the campaign. The good presentation on the page is part of why it’s doing so well, but the goodwill established by the developer’s pedigree is likely the largest factor. The pledging tiers appear manageable for them too thanks to the lack of physical goods they’re promising — but that’s not to say there aren’t any. Developers of crowdfunded games always run into problems with non-digital goods, regardless of how much money they’ve raised, given the logistics difficulties with shipping items to different regions in the world. Keeping them to a minimal is the best option.

Owlcat had several stretch goals after the initial goal, and it’s reached most of them. They’ve unlocked options such as a new human companion character and evolving animal companions, new classes (Warpriest and Skald), mounted combat, dismemberment, two new Mythic Paths, a new race, and orchestral themes. The only currently-revealed stretch goal it hasn’t met involves “Double Reactivity” at $1.155 million, which will exacerbate how reactive NPCs will be to the main character. Given how much the project is making, it will easily make that and more, especially as they reveal more gameplay features players want through the Kickstarter updates.

The team behind Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous intends to release the game for PC via Steam and GoG in June 2021, a realistic date given all the work they’ve done thus far and assets being reused from the previous game. This is a crowdfunded project, so hopefully no one will act too surprised if — or likely when — it takes even the smallest delay (Kingmaker missed the target by only a month). The success of this project shows how the revival of classic-style isometric RPGs wasn’t a short-lived one, and we might see more thanks to this and the potential sales of the also-crowdfunded Wasteland 3 from Obsidian.