To beat up Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous' demonic hordes, players will be able to embark on a mythic path, turning their hero or villain into one of six extremely extra specialisations: Angel, Demon, Lich, Trickster, Aeon and Azata. Developer Owlcat says they're Wrath of the Righteous' main feature, and in a recent AMA they offered up some more details about how they work.
I've got a thing for liches. They're theatrical, snappy dressers and know their way around a spell book. I used to frustrate some friends by constantly resurrecting their lich adversary in a long-running campaign because I just had far too much fun hamming it up. Wrath of the Righteous' Lich path sounds like it should keep me almost as entertained. It's even possible to replace your party with undead servants.
"Lich will be able to raise powerful undeads out of some of the NPCs and bosses through the game," says creative director Alexander Mishulin. "Lich can use them as a party member, but of course this will replace companion, and companion quest and/or banter will be missing."
That doesn't mean you need to forgo companion quests just because you've filled your party with corpses. Just like any other party-based RPG, you can swap your companions, including your undead chums, so you can bring your living friends back to complete their quests. According to Mishulin, there are also some other uses for your undead mates beyond replacing companions.
You won't be starting out as a mythic character. You'll pick a regular race and class first, then you'll have to actively follow the appropriate path. If you want to become an immortal master of the undead, you'll have to start acting like one.
"To become Lich you will have to make some evil actions and that will pull your alignment toward evil," says Mishulin. Each of them favours particular alignments, though you'll still be able to make your own choices even when you've become mythic. If you're going down the Lich path, though, you're probably not going to be good. Neutral, maybe.
Transforming into a celestial warrior or a cosmic judge—Owlcat describes the Aeon as "Judge Dredd meets Merlin"—takes more than sticking to a certain alignment, though the specifics are still a mystery.
"You choose your mythic path, but some choices need to be unlocked first," says narrative designer Arseniy Krymov, "some easily, some will take effort."
Companions will be able to become mythic, too, though there's a different progression path. They'll get mythic feats, but according to Mishulin they'll be more generic. The protagonist, meanwhile, will get more themed abilities, spells and feats, along with some unique mechanics, like raising the undead. It sounds like each of them has at least one game-changing trick.
Owlcat also addressed the subject of Pathfinder: Kingmaker's rocky launch. The studio underestimated how much choice and reactivity it had crammed into the game, though this has apparently been solved in Wrath of the Righteous thanks to a tool that catalogues all the consequences of every decision in the game. The sequel will also have an extended tutorial system to teach players the rules of both the tabletop game and Wrath of the Righteous.
I'm still working my way through the first game—it is extremely long—but with no release date announced, I'm hoping I'll have enough time to finish one Pathfinder adventure before the next arrives. I came to it after several updates and haven't had any problems, so hopefully the sequel will arrive with this level of polish already applied. With the Kickstarter now at more than $1.5 million (the original goal was $300,000) it should certainly have more resources.
As was pointed out in the comments, two more mythic paths were added in stretch goals: the Swarm-That-Walks and Gold Dragon. And you can choose to ignore them all just be a legendary mortal.
