Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Preview

It ain't hard to imagine a bunch of Warhammer 40,000 fanatics hopped up on drugs, seeing their favorite miniature figures come to life and move across the board, battling each other in brutal, visceral fashion. (Ed - And yet, try as I may, I still can't.) In fact, I'm pretty sure that in the long history of Warhammer 40,000 tabletop gaming this has happened on a number of occasions. (Ed - When?)

No Space Marine will ever mine ore!

That's it, boys, keep pounding them with led!

Now I don't know whether it's to keep the tabletop players off the streets or to simply amuse themselves ... or possibly to earn bundles of cash, but Relic Entertainment, makers of the famous Homeworld RTS series, have rolled up their sleeves and started work on a real-time strategy game set in the Warhammer 40k universe. As a result of this noble endeavor, the few unfortunate drug addicts amongst the many Warhammer 40,000 fans will get to live out their fantasies without chemical assistance. All they'll need to do is fire up their PC and presto, their favorite fantasy world will come alive with scenes of furious massive battles in their favorite fantasy set. (Ed - That is if they haven't sold their PC for a hit of smack.)

Now in case you're not familiar with the Warhammer 40,000 universe, it is a mythos, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, but with its own distinct background and history that makes it one of the most popular fantasy worlds today. Any true tabletop gaming fanatic will tell you that Warhammer's lore has very little in common with Tolkien's myths. And they will be right to point that out as the story in Warhammer 40,000 takes place 40,000 years in the future, where familiar races like the Orks battle against units wielding highly advanced, tech-age weaponry like laser rifles, flamethrowers and such. In essence, what you'll need to know about the Warhammer 40,000 mythos is that it allows for Mech-like units to clash against ax-wielding Orks and that's something you'll never see in the world of Middle-earth. The gist of Relic's new game, however, is that Dawn of War won't require any prior knowledge of the Warhammer fantasy setting. That said, I wouldn't delve any deeper into the depiction of the universe as I might face eternal wrath from the truly devoted fans of the board game that would probably throw dice at me and chant nasty spells from 'ancient' scripts they got off a friend's friend for $29.99.

In Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, players get to carry out the commandment "thou shalt kill," forging their way through the single-player campaign as Blood Ravens, an entirely new chapter of the Space Marines created by Relic Entertainment and Games Workshop specifically for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. Space Marines are one of the four races that will be included in the game. The other three are the bloodthirsty, hording orks, a race that I like to call tech-savvy elves - the Eldar, and the forces of Chaos Marines (you might call them the antonym of Space Marines), a nasty bunch that thrives on spreading evil and destruction. While the Orks' motivation for combat is the glory of war and blood-spilling, these guys are strictly motivated by acts of pure evil. They don't fight just for the sake of fighting and killing, they fight to spread evil and cause pain and havoc.

In any case, at the expense of pissing off single-player buffs, Relic has opted to focus solely on the Space Marines for the single-player campaign. They say this way they'll be able to deliver a better story-driven single-player experience. All four races will be available to the players in multiplayer however, which is certainly great news for online gaming buffs looking to take advantage of the myriad of strategies that will be available as a result of having to play with such diverse races, each with their unique fighting styles and tech trees.

But to get back to the single-player campaign, as you take charge of the Blood Ravens, you will bring them to bear on a growing Ork threat to the planet Tartarus. However, things on the battle-scarred planet are not as they seem, and soon your heroes, Brother Captain Gabriel Angelos and his faithful sub-commander, the powerful psyker Librarian Isador Akios, find themselves in the midst of a complex plot involving Orks, Eldar, and the evil forces of Chaos. It's important to note here that the narrative was written specifically for the game, and although it takes place in settings familiar to Warhammer fans, the plot is autonomous in the sense that it allows for both the hardcore crowds and newbies to the fantasy setting to enjoy it.

In a way, this logic has been applied by Relic throughout the development process. The goal of the designers is not to faithfully translate the turn-based board game to the PC, but to set an RTS game in the Warhammer 40,000 backdrop. This makes a lot of sense when you think about it, as trying to port a turn-based tabletop gaming experience into an intense real-time one would possibly lead to less than stellar results. Instead, Relic has opted to lay down their own set of ground rules for how Dawn of War will be played. One thing they wanted to do, however, is to bring the little Warhammer figures to life and to do that they had to focus on combat more than anything else. To do this you need to have the kind of game play that is a little different from your usual RTS experience. You need a more tactical strategy experience that will allow for a detailed depiction of the action while not burdening the player too much with stuff like resource gathering. As a result, the traditional system of resource management, of having to produce a boatload of peons to mine resources, has been scrapped in favor of a more combat-minded approach. (Ed - Kill your peons, eat the corpses and burn the rest for fire, ain't war hell!) Each side, or in the case of the single-player game, the Space Marines will start out with a set number of units. In order to upgrade the units as well as build structures, players will be required to capture strategic points on the map. Controlling these points will allow for base building, tech upgrades as well as reinforcements to be sent. By capturing a strategic point, you gain 'requisition' points, fuel and such, which in essence present the only true resource in the game. While you'll still be able to produce peons, they'll be dirt cheap and largely insignificant and you'll only use them to build structures. This way the entire process of resource management has been streamlined in such a way that you gain resources through combat. The strategic points will be located on various bottlenecks on the map like bridge crossings and hard-to-reach vantage points. This will ensure that the majority of your time in the game is spent on fighting the other races for the control of these points. You'll spend much less time building stuff and no time on mining for resources.