In a new interview with PCGamesN to mark Owlcat’s 10th anniversary, studio co-founder and creative director Alexander Mishulin talked about Owlcat’s history and upcoming projects. Two things really caught my eye: Owlcat’s still got hardcore CRPG fans covered, and the studio’s bulked up to the heavyweight division.
“We will continue to make CRPGs because we love them,” Mishulin said of the action-RPG versus CRPG question. “We do not want to become stagnant. We will be trying different approaches for our RPG games, trying to find the best possible fit for the idea of the game.
“We want to create the best possible RPGs, we like them, we play them, we get inspired by them and we want our games to feel the same, that we would enjoy them ourselves and hope that they will inspire someone else to create even better ones.”
Owlcat’s first three games share an engine, design sensibility, and overall structure—you’re a monarch or otherwise leading a state-level organization—so the very Mass Effect-like The Expanse: Osiris Reborn represents a huge, if exciting, departure. I didn’t think there was a danger of the studio permanently pivoting away from the house style that put it on the map, but Mishulin’s statement is reassuring.
It’s also backed up by the other game Owlcat has in development, Warhammer 40K: Dark Heresy. It iterates on Owlcat’s CRPG engine and the ruleset of Rogue Trader in a way that echoes the jump from Pathfinder: Kingmaker to Wrath of the Righteous.
But it’s also a big departure in its own way: Owlcat is trading its customary ruler fantasy and light 4X elements for an ambitious, highly reactive, detective/investigation metagame—it sounds rad.
The studio has massively expanded to work on two projects simultaneously: Both PCGamesN and Wccftech have reported that Owlcat currently consists of around 600 employees. Looking at other RPG big boys, Larian was north of 500 at last check-in, and Obsidian is currently in the low 200s following Microsoft’s latest layoffs.
According to a 2024 fact sheet, CD Projekt Red has 1,134 worldwide employees, while a 2023 financial statement had its heartland studio in Warsaw accounting for 615 of them.
BioWare was likely pushing a 500-600 person headcount at its fullest extent in the 2010s (with the Montreal and Austin branches), but back of the napkin math has it now at 100 or fewer employees following post-Veilguard layoffs.
It’s unclear how many separate offices Owlcat’s staff is spread across. Originally founded in Moscow, the developer is currently headquartered in Paphos, Cyprus. This expanded manpower is certainly in the “Yep, that’s enough people to handle two RPGs at once” range, and you could imagine Owlcat satisfying both action and CRPG fans by keeping up a multi-game approach, similar to what BioWare managed with Mass Effect and Dragon Age during its golden years.
