Paizo Partners with BKOM on Two Pathfinder Games!

This is exciting and I can't wait for more details!

Quite interested, no clue if this company will do these justice like good old Owlcat, but great to see progress again for PC games.

Now where is our Starfinder games :)

And is it going to be 1st or 2nd ED PF ??

Tom

GREAT JOB team Paizo!!!

This is great news as I very much enjoyed the previous two games. Let's hope this studio maintains the quality.

Will these be for second edition?

Starfinder next please?

I'm sure it will be P2. It lends itself better to a computer game with the standardized actions and tighter math.

OR! Starfinder with P2 rules would be even better.

I'm going to assume that this is for Second Edition, as I believe that Owlcat said they have no interest in making a 2nd Edition pathfinder game.

So i'm excited to see what BKOM can do! Looking at their previous work it seems they are getting bigger and better with each new game, and i imagine they are hopeful that this partnership will elevate them to the next level.

And maybe if Owlcat is so determined to stick with 1st edition rules, maybe they'll be the ones to make a Starfinder game.

Starfinder, please.

We encourage you to explore the games BKOM has already made to get clues at to what they are making for us.

We continue to believe Starfinder will also make great video games and pursue them at every opportunity.

If PF II then I hope for Age of Ashes, or maybe they will update a PF I AP to II??

Owlcat really missed the boat I think as Kingmaker in Space has been done, and or the year long Drift event and 2 3 part AP's. But with SF II looming on the howizon in a year or two, after Starfinder Enhanced comes out, a SF PC game might be long in coming sadly. But great fun to speculate!!

But for now PF PC games full speed ahead, be it PF II, or I!!!

:)

Tom

Waves at Aaron, oh you sly one!!!

:) Tom

They've made a turn-based D&D game, Tales from Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation; however, this was removed from Steam last year because their D&D licence expired.

I'm hoping for either Abomination Vaults or Age of Ashes...or both!!!

Yep, just checked out a playthrough on You tube, not to bad.

So they might be able to pull it off!!

Tom

If only it were coming to a better platform and/or distribution channel. Why Steam? Ugh.

With Paizo's strong support of Open Gaming, it's sad to hear the games are only available through the DRM factory...

I am very excited about this news. To be honest, I'm going to give a lot of leeway in game quality because I'm absolutely desperate for PF2 video game content, but if it's even close to what I'm seeing about Tales from Candelkeep, I'd be pretty dang happy.

If only it were coming to a better platform and/or distribution channel. Why Steam? Ugh.

With Paizo's strong support of Open Gaming, it's sad to hear the games are only available through the DRM factory...

Sorry mate, that's a battle for a higher level party. Small game publishers are in no position to die on that hill.

If only it were coming to a better platform and/or distribution channel. Why Steam? Ugh.

With Paizo's strong support of Open Gaming, it's sad to hear the games are only available through the DRM factory...

If you're purchasing Paizo products from anywhere that gives you infinite license to distribute and copy, then uh, I'm sure they'd like to know. They've never been shy about saying "rules are free, content you pay for".

We encourage you to explore the games BKOM has already made to get clues at to what they are making for us.

Interesting. I mean, we'd probably do that anyway to a degree, but to have it specifically called out...? What I'm hearing is that there's a nontrivial chance that you all just pointed at TfC:ToA and said "We want you to make the next one of those in our system."

Which... honestly, fair enough. Half-gutting and rebuilding/enhancing/tuning an existing game is going to be a lot less work than building one from the ground up, and efficiency matters. Money is oxygen, and all that.

It also explains how you could manage a less-than-a-year turnaround time. Paizo tends to care about quality, and building quality from the ground up takes time.

Of course there's two games in the pipe. I'm betting, though, that they won't be the same kind of game. You wouldn't want to plan a proper sequel until you got numbers for the original. So... probably something for mobile devices? I'm guessing that that would be the second of the two games, as it's not starting in the same "already half-designed" state that the other would.

We continue to believe Starfinder will also make great video games and pursue them at every opportunity.

Translation: "Look. We're trying, here."

They've made a turn-based D&D game, Tales from Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation; however, this was removed from Steam last year because their D&D licence expired.

So what I'm hearing you say is that there are reasons to work with the people who don't hate their third party developers.

So... probably something for mobile devices?

Yep, from looking at BKOM's site, and knowing Owlcat Games has only scratched the surface on the Pathfinder PC series, there is only 1 possibility for the 2nd game.. *Mobile*

That's interesting news! Hope it's PF2 and a full-fledged RPG.

Ourevel wrote:

If only it were coming to a better platform and/or distribution channel. Why Steam? Ugh. With Paizo's strong support of Open Gaming, it's sad to hear the games are only available through the DRM factory...

Sorry mate, that's a battle for a higher level party. Small game publishers are in no position to die on that hill.

Owlcat's games have been distributed (with great success) on friendly platforms like GOG, outside of the Steam anti-consumer system.

But looking at BKOM's website, it looks like they specialize in licensed, mostly mobile device, cashgrabs, so maybe it won't be a loss.

They've made a turn-based D&D game, Tales from Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation; however, this was removed from Steam last year because their D&D licence expired.

Yeah I also noticed that. Abomination Vaults would make a good video game. Certainly smaller in scope than some other world spanning APs.

Very excited! I'm hoping they stick closer to the lore than Owlcat, and perhaps even make their own thing rather than a video game adaptation of an existing AP. Now, if it were more polished than Owlcat's games, done in 2e, and had a good story, it'd be perfect. I am hopeful! We'll see where this leads.

Now, if it were more polished than Owlcat's games

Owlcat had a dedicated crew and they really struggled to port a good share of the ruleset to a computer game. I remember Kingmaker's bug infested start. Many studios would have given up on fixing such a mountain of issues.

If I were at BKOM, I'd try to motivate everyone to learn as much as possible from the past. A light-hearted approach will succeed only on a natural 20, unless the scope of the game is really reduced.

I adored the Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous video games, bugs and a few lore changes notwithstanding. Anything of comparable quality to those two games would interest me a great deal.

I may be getting ahead of myself, but one thing that I believe many people would appreciate are physical Switch ports of the games. Being able to play a single-player Pathfinder game on the go without the need to constantly ping a cloud service would be nice indeed. That's assuming that these aren't mobile titles or MMOs, which would preclude such concessions.

Owlcat Games has set an extremely high bar, it's going to be very difficult to not make comparisons with possibly some of the best cRPG's *ever* made after Owlcat (or Paizo not sure tbh) decided to go another direction. Assuming these are even in the same category of videogames at all.

I'm cautiously optimistic, as I'm worried they'll just be lifting and shifting into the Tales of Candlekeep engine which was not great, both as a game and an engine. Not quite the impeccable track record I would hope for the next entry in a Paizo videogame.

Fingers crossed.

I'm hopiong for Starfinder
I'm also hoping its coopable. Even if its just assigning control in battle and they otherwise just watch.
So much of these games are single player which is fun and great. but the old couch coop with siblings from the 90s and handing over control of other characters. as well as divinity's coop has made me miss that. and these kindo turned basedones are great for it

Looking forward to a Starfinder vidgame! I hope this studio is a good one. Open world and co-op i.e. Divinity 2, would be nice to see.

I have to be honest. My preference for another Paizo video game is for Starfinder. But for the love of God, don't make it SF2e(PFS2e in space). SF has only been out since 2017. And by the time they make a SF2e, hopefully they'll have something that doesn't feel so hamstringed at times.

Sorry, not sorry. I like PF2e, but I don't love it.

Owlcat Games has set an extremely high bar, it's going to be very difficult to not make comparisons with possibly some of the best cRPG's *ever* made after Owlcat (or Paizo not sure tbh) decided to go another direction. Assuming these are even in the same category of videogames at all.

From what I hear, the reason they're not going with Owlcat is that Owlcat has been entirely unwilling to write games in PF2, and they want stuff in the new system. It's really that simple.

From what I hear, the reason they're not going with Owlcat is that Owlcat has been entirely unwilling to write games in PF2, and they want stuff in the new system. It's really that simple.

I've heard that too, but I'mhoping it's at least partially exagerrated, at least in as much as Paizo is open to letting Owlcat continue to make games with 1e. I don't blame Owlcat for not wanting to move to 2e after spending so long getting 1e working. I'd love Paizo to get some 2e games off the ground because I like the system more, but I'd love to live in a world where we get both.

I'm choosing not to read into Owlcat's next project being 40K since it's good from a creative and business standpoint for them to branch out and not be too bound to Pathfinder. Plus I only heard about this BKOM thing because Owlcat quote retweeted the announcement, so it seems like the relationship is still friendly. Hopefully in a couple years we'll be hearing about Owlcat's next Pathfinder game.

The depth of Owlcat's games is massive. There is a point on that some mechanics could have been better ported, but let's be honest, Pathfinder 1e is a huge game, it was an unrealistic task from the begining. I cannot imagine anyone being able to put up something better than what they did, and they had a huge surge of money and put a lot of love with that initial Kickstarter (plus a considerable amount of time). Just a hundred thanks for what you did Owlcat Games and Paizo!

I wish the best for Paizo and BKOM on this new venture, but it is hard to believe with the time and gold pieces at hand, that they would be able to land a game that feels that close enough to actual involvement in playing an Adventure Path.

Looking at TfC:ToA, that is totally another kind of game (more casual). Which is also fine, it has its own space, and probably has all the sense from a profitability point of view.

For players like myself who want the depth of a huge campaign, immersion in Golarion, appealing companions and a wide range of interesting mechanics to mimic a real roleplaying session, our best hopes are probably on someone, someday, reusing the current engine for a 3rd take on Pathfinder Adventure Paths.

For Paizo, any extra income and branding that would allow them to maintain the company and expand their player base, would be good, and I hope BKOM can deliver that.

So... This just happened.

Thoughts?

For those skeptical, the original partnership with Paizo that became Kingmaker was with My.Games which had a bunch of mobile games prior to putting together the Owlcat team?

Further Owlcat separated from My.Games in 2022.

Anyway, I'll keep an open mind for developments on this.