Dawn of War is a pretty awesome RTS game for PCs. No release date is given yet, but the first screens, trailer, and info is out for Dawn of War II, along with a great preview from IGN.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II First Look
All the details, screens, and video on Relic's ambitious sequel to its real-time strategy franchise.
June 5, 2008 - Building on the strengths of the original, allowing for a greater sense of permanence, and establishing a more steady reward stream are the foundations of Relic's design philosophy for Dawn of War II. The true sequel to the visceral real-time strategy series based on Games Workshop's frenzied Warhammer 40,000 universe, the game appears to maintain to the almost absurd level of violence and frantic gameplay that made the original in 2004 and its three expansions so endearing and entertaining.
Earlier this year Relic brought a bunch of games press to its studio in Vancouver, British Columbia, to show off its progress with the sequel and how the series' spirit has been maintained despite the many changes made. Many appreciated the kind of persistent campaign we saw in the second expansion, Dark Crusade, and Relic is focusing much more heavily on permanently rewarding players for victory in combat this time around.
Before we get into all the specifics of exactly what's new and how it might affect the experience, we'll start with the basics. Dawn of War II is, not surprisingly, still a real-time strategy game. It's still early on so details aren't really comprehensive at this point, but we do know at least the Space Marines and Orks will be playable in the single-player campaign as well as, we assume, in the multiplayer portion. The campaign, which we'll describe in a bit, is being designed to be playable as both races, and both campaigns can be played co-operatively.
Relic's Jonny Ebbert, lead designer on Dawn of War II, sees the option for co-operative play as an essential feature if the genre is to move forward. "That's one of the big failing of RTSes at this point. It's built, especially the multiplayer component is built, almost entirely around an antagonistic relationship. Pitting you mano-a-mano against another player and it's a whole loss of face if you lose; it's a very high-pressure situation. What we found just watching multiplayer statistics online is that a vast majority of players would rather co-operate with each other against an opponent that doesn't have a human face that doesn't tell you what a noob you are if you lose. The co-operative campaign is based entirely around that concept. Players want to co-operate in a story-based setting not just in comp-stomp."
Sounds a little like player-versus-environment dungeon content, no? Did you also know Dawn of War II has loot drops?
Ebbert continued, "We want to keep [the campaign] as open and flexible as possible and as simple as possible... The campaign will be balanced so it will still be challenging whether you're playing by yourself or playing co-op with a friend."
Will any other races be playable in the single-player campaign? Considering after three expansions the original Dawn of War offered a staggering total of nine playable races, we're assuming Relic is holding back for now with the intent of announcing some at a later date. We know a lot of Warhammer 40K fans are hoping for Tyranids, but no word on it yet. According to Ebbert, "Right now we're only talking about the Space Marines and Orkz. There are a lot of things we'd love to talk about, but we've got a plan with what we want to release and when to build up anticipation."
The game's been in production for a few years now, is being built on Relic's proprietary Essence Engine 2.0, will feature fully integrated Havok physics, be optimized for multicore processors, and feature true high dynamic range and dynamic lighting. Though sometimes early screenshots can be misleading, we can say those released so far for Dawn of War II are more or less representative of how the actual game looks.
From the campaign's beginning to end you'll control the same squads of troops. Each squad will have a leader, but the entirety of the group (five or six members strong according to Relic) can be equipped with weaponry, armor, and accessories. Squad leaders will have their own unique faces, voices, and personalities as well, which Relic hopes will foster a better sense of attachment with players compared to the process of churning out unit after faceless unit from production facilities. We're certainly excited by this notion, since it's hard to establish any significant emotional attachment to a tiny RTS unit when, for a small resource fee, you can just create another. "We always felt it kind of broke the illusion that you're training units on the ground," said Ebbert. "The thought of little factories cranking out Space Marines on the ground just didn't jibe with how we interpreted the game."
While most plot details are still being withheld, we were told that the core of the Imperium is under assault and it's up to the player, as the Space Marines, to bash some skulls and remove the threat. On your starship you'll then move in nonlinear fashion through star systems and settle into low orbit around selected planets. Before battle you'll be able to outfit your crew with whatever wargear you've unlocked, something that's acquired in a very RPG-like fashion. Instead of using accumulated requisition points like in Dark Crusade, you'll now acquire wargear as quest rewards and as random drops from enemies on the battlefield.
Like in an RPG, the sorts of quests that you decide to embark upon will likely be determined by what kinds of rewards they offer. Since Dawn of War II will feature both main story quests and side-quests and give you quest descriptions and the ability to peruse wargear reward statistics before taking on the mission, you'll have to do some thinking as to which quests to take on. Each mission is visible while in orbit as a colored dot on the planet's surface. Mousing over a dot will reveal primary and secondary objectives as well as a fully voiced reading of the quest description. Interestingly, you won't be able to complete all the missions. Instead, Relic is implementing a system whereby completing certain missions will affect which others are available, as well as how things progress in the story. "The goal is to save as much of the sector of the galaxy as possible," said Ebbert, "and it's not just which mission you accept; it's what you do in the mission [and] how well you do in the mission. The things you do in the mission will all affect how effectively you save the sector of the galaxy from destruction."
Once you finally settle on a mission it's off to the battlefield, which appears to be much different this time around. Think of it sort of like Company of Heroes meets Dawn of War minus any sort of significant base building. You pick which squads you want to start a mission and during battle additional squads can be called down from your ship that slam into the battlefield in drop pods, damaging and knocking down enemies. Other than that you'll have really pay attention as there doesn't seem to be an obvious way to significantly reinforce troops. Troop death and reinforcement wasn't something Relic was willing to get into, as apparently the system is still being worked on. Since your troops and squads are supposed to last throughout the entire campaign, it would make sense if there was some easy way to revive fallen troops, but if the reviving will be handled like Dawn of War's reinforcement system or after a mission is unclear. "There will be reinforcement in the game," said Ebbert. "We loved reinforcement in the original Dawn of War; we loved it in Company of Heroes. We're taking a very close look at it right now and we're trying to decide. They were two different systems and we're trying to decide what were the strengths of each system and what we can draw out of that and make it even better."
What about if a squad leader is killed? "The death mechanics are something that's going to really change the way RTS is played and we're kind of keeping that card close to our vest right now until later in the year"" said Ebbert.
As for control points, "There will be points you control on the map. It was such an important part of Dawn of War, it was such an important part of [Company of Heroes] and we want to really see if we can find a way to dial up the action of controlling points in Dawn of War II."
As for the actual gameplay, in Dawn of War II your units will automatically flee to cover spots should they come under fire. Manually ordering units behind strong cover points will also dramatically affect how much damage they can absorb. We saw groups of Orks and Space Marines firing at each other from cover for what seemed like an eternity in an action-focused real-time strategy game like this (over 10 seconds) while barely doing any damage.
Countering this involves finding ways to affect the environment, since pretty much all cover is destructible. Grenades are a great way to detonate strong points, and Space Marines can engage their jump jets to quickly hop behind banks of sandbags and slice apart their opposition. Shooting explosive barrels is another option, as they seemed to be fairly prevalent in the maps shown, though they may have just been there for demo purposes. Better cover than just sandbags can be found inside buildings, which can be garrisoned by troops. Yet even while shooing from a window you'll not be safe, as the structure's walls can be blown wide open, rendering you vulnerable.
There will be far more spectacular methods of flattening landscape than simple explosives or barrels. Remember how you've got a starship orbiting whatever planet you're questing on? Well, like any good star-faring vessel should, it has energy cannons. And yes, you can order it to aim and fire those cannons at the enemy, producing a devastating series of energy blasts that not only permanently crater the battlefield but decimate whatever troops happen to be in the area. At first it's only recognizable by a few beams of light. A few twinkles start to show up as the beams widen, and units in the vicinity will actually lift up and float in the air before the fully-charged beam hits the surface, wiping pretty much everything out. It's a spectacular attack to behold, and we can't wait to see what other sorts of super-abilities Relic plans on including in the game. "We're working very hard to bring out the personalities of each race in their military model and in the abilities they have," Ebbert noted, which would seem to indicate each race will have their own super-abilities.
With so many things exploding, you should expect to see quite a few units flying around the screen. Those knocked from their feet won't be non-entities; instead they'll now crash into anything they make contact with. This includes fences and other units, adding another layer of tactical depth here, giving whoever caused the domino effect a greater window of opportunity for attack.
During the entire demo we didn't get a chance to see any of the user interface, something Ebbert informed us was being switched around for the sequel. If you remember, the UI in Dawn of War wasn't exactly difficult to notice. "The goal of the UI is to be as unobtrusive as possible [and] to be as intuitive as possible. That's one of the areas we felt could really be simplified in RTS was the UI. We felt like the genre has been falling down as a whole on that. So we've taken a very close look at it, we've come up with a very minimalist but easy to understand UI that we're really excited to showcase later."
There's still plenty more we'd like to hear about Dawn of War II, like how the multiplayer works, for instance, but the information just isn't available. Ebbert did add that "there is a tech tree in multiplayer, but we're not talking about multiplayer right now."
It's worth pointing out that the way the release schedule is looking, the two biggest RTS games right now, Relic's Dawn of War II and Blizzard's StarCraft II, might wind up releasing at almost the same time. Will gamers have to make a choice between Blizzard's more traditional approach or Relic's more progressive designs? "StarCraft II is a great game," Ebbert said. "It's building on the formula that was pioneered back in 1997. It's a very tried-and-true formula and there's a lot of players that just eat that up. Dawn of War II is trying to offer a much different experience. It's trying to push the RTS genre into new areas... we think there are a lot of players out there that are looking for something new."
With its dedication to the PC, Relic is trying to make sure it taps into what's proving to be successful as the platform changes. "Some genres are tapering off on the PC platform, some are experiencing explosive growth," said Ebbert. "Massively multiplayer games, free-to-play games are experiencing rapid growth and the way we interpret that data is that they provide superior fantasies... That's why we sat down and said 'How is RTS falling short?'... And that's why we've tried to add long-term goals, better reward structure, [and] a better sense of attachment to be competitive with those genres."
"We're convinced that the PC platform is a profitable one, you just have to meet the players' needs."
Dawn of War II currently scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2009.
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