WARHAMMER: DAWN OF WAR IV announced

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV has been officially announced. The latest instalment in the venerable real-time strategy series will be released in 2026 on PC. It will also be the first game in the series not to be developed by Relic Entertainment, with instead King Art Games taking on development duties for publisher Deep Silver.

Despite the new team, the game will be steeped in the lore of the earlier titles. Once again you take control of the Blood Ravens chapter of Space Marines and their Adeptus Mechanicus allies as they battle Orks and Necrons on the planet Kronus. Cyrus, a major character from Dawn of War II and its expansions, also returns as the commander of the Blood Ravens forces in this game. The game promises a return to the larger-scaled combat of the original title and its expansions, and promises an eyebrow-raising 70+ campaign missions spread across the four factions, whilst there will also be several multiplayer options.

Dawn of War was released in 2004 and was a smash hit success, praised for its detailed (and gory) combat animations, its cover system and replacing resource gathering with holding strategic points on the battlefield, forcing players to play aggressively rather than turtle in their base. The original game allowed players to play as the Blood Ravens, Eldar, Chaos and Orks (though only the Blood Ravens in the story-driven campaign mode). The game was expanded through three well-received expansions, Winter Assault (2005), Dark Crusade (2006) and Soulstorm (2008), which added strategic maps where players could plan their next assaults, as well as adding the Imperial Guard, Tau, Necrons, Sisters of Battle and Dark Eldar factions.

Dawn of War was regarded as a major reason for the increase in popularity of the Warhammer 40,000 franchise in the United States, as well as renewed interest in the franchise in the UK and a boost for sales of the wargame and associated novels. Relic also used the same game engine to power their critically-acclaimed World War II series Company of Heroes, with its first entry released in 2006.

Dawn of War II was released in 2009 and was also successful, but the decision to move away from traditional real-time strategy stalwarts like base-building in favour of guiding a smaller group of tougher units around the map, with a stronger focus on cooldown abilities, was controversial. The initial release allowed players to play as the Space Marines, Orks, Eldar and Tyranids. The expansions Chaos Rising (2010) and Retribution (2011) added the Chaos Space Marines and Imperial Guard factions. 

Dawn of War III was released in 2017 and was highly controversial, with an attempt to appeal to both the fans of the previous games meaning it fell between the two stools and was not regarded as a good RTS or a good hero-focused action game, although the expansion of the game's scale to accommodate Titan-class units was appreciated.

The series has recently returned to prominence with the release just last week of Dawn of War: Definitive Edition, which repackages the original game and its three expansions into one title, with (modestly) upgraded graphics and resolution, and compatibility with modern systems and enhanced options for modding.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III

Cyprus Ultimate, homeworld of House Varlock, is under attack by a vast ork horde led by Warboss Gitstompa. The Blood Angels Space Marine Chapter under Gabriel Angelos responds, but to Angelos's fury he is prevented from assisting by Inquisitor Holt. It becomes clear that something greater than a mere ork raid is taking place when Eldar forces led by Gabriel's old ally/enemy Macha arrive. A powerful artefact, the Spear of Khaine, becomes the price for all three armies as an even greater threat arises.

Dawn of War III is the third game in the venerable series which began way back in 2004 with Dawn of War, a real-time strategy game in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. That game was popular and certainly fun to play, but suffered with the round peg of real-time strategy being whacked into the square hole of overpowered Space Marines and Predator tanks. Although a solid game (spawning several expansions), Dawn of War didn't quite fit the Warhammer 40,000 setting.

The sequel, 2009's Dawn of War II, switched to being an action-strategy game, drawing more inspiration from the likes of Diablo than the real-time strategy genre. Instead of being able to build tons of units, you instead deployed individual heroes, each of whom was accompanied by a strong bodyguard. You then guided these hero units across the battlefield, making lots of use of specific powers with cooldowns. Despite arguably feeling more like Warhammer 40,000, at least with the high-powered units like Space Marines, the game faced a mixed reception due to the much smaller army sizes and resulting smaller battles, and the removal of base-building and defence.

Dawn of War III arrived a surprising eight years after the previous game in the series and made the cardinal mistake of trying to appease fans of both earlier games in the series, by restoring much of the base-building, defence and territory acquisition elements of the first game, but also retaining the second game's focus on hero units which require detailed micro-managing on the field of battle at the same time you're also mustering a large force of dozens of units to stomp across the map. In the immortal words of Ron Swanson, "Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing." Dawn of War III suffers accordingly from its lack of focus and its attempts to please everyone.

That's not to say that fun can't be had with the game. The storyline - although tiresomely leaning on the "enemy sides who fight each other for the whole game before joining forces against a mutual threat" cliche that was dull and boring when StarCraft did it twenty-one years ago - is perfectly enjoyable and it's fun catching up with returning characters from the original game and its expansions. For the first time in a linear Dawn of War campaign, you can also play all three of the base game's playable sides, with the story rotating through the Space Marine, Ork and Eldar factions. This is at first fun, but rapidly becomes frustrating, as you spend an entire mission (which may last anything up to two hours) learning the intricacies of one faction, only having to switch to a new faction in the next mission and it may be several missions before you get back to the same side (especially given the prevalence of missions where you don't engage in standard battles, instead guiding a hero unit on a solo mission behind enemy lines).

Once battle is joined, the game can become frantic, with modern graphical power making explosions, special abilities and so on quite spectacular. However, outside of the fighting the game is cumbersome. As with most of Relic's real-time strategy games going back to Dawn of War, controlling resource points on the map is key. Unlike other Relic games, these resource points are extremely rare, sometimes with only 3 or 4 on a whole map. This wouldn't be a problem if you had the ability from both the Dawn of War and Company of Heroes series to build defences around each resource point as you see fit. You can't. Instead, the resource point gets a single turret if you build a listening post on it and that's it. You can't build static defences at all, which is preposterous (the orks can build Waaagh! Towers, but only five maximum on a single map, and their guns are pretty feeble). The income from each resource point is also risible, even when you fully upgrade it. As a result, gathering resources is much slower and more precarious than in Relic's previous four real-time strategy games and seven expansions.

Worse still is the inexplicable removal of Relic's superb cover system, which allowed your unit to take cover in bomb craters or destroyed buildings, or hide behind wrecked vehicles. This is gone, replaced by carefully marked "cover shelters" which your units have to capture before being able to take cover. This is insane, makes no sense, and makes battles a frustrating start-stop affair rather than the rolling back-and-forth of previous games.

Unit costs are also far too high. More than half of the maps in the game I completed without even hitting the halfway point on the unit cap, as building a full-size army took such an ridiculous amount of time that it frequently wasn't worth even trying.

Later in the game it perks a bit more into life, by giving you much more starting resources so you can field a much better force. The last few missions also focus on the deployment of large-scale war machines on the battlefield, which are great fun (particularly House Varlock's Knight, a building-sized war mecha). The last few missions are far superior to the rest, allowing you to experience the game's full range of tactical and strategic options. But I suspect many players will have given up in frustration long before then.

Dawn of War III (**½) is not a complete disaster, and can be enjoyable in parts. But by trying to merge the MOBA-like qualities of Dawn of War II to the RTS stylings of the original, the game has ended up being a weird hybrid which doesn't achieve the strengths of either genre. Worth playing if you are a fan of the first two games, but only if you can get it cheap.

WARHAMMER 40,000: DAWN OF WAR III announced

Sega and Relic have announced that they are working on Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III. This will be the third game in the series that began with the extremely popular and critically-acclaimed Dawn of War in 2004 and continued with the more divisive Dawn of War II in 2009.

Relic originally announced that Dawn of War III was in early development in 2011, just before their publisher, THQ, went bust. A period of confusion followed as Sega snapped up Relic and spent some time sorting out the various licensing issues. Games Workshop has branched out in the meantime, allowing numerous other studios to work on Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 games. Battlefleet Gothic, a space strategy game set in the WH40K universe, was released just a few weeks ago and Total War: Warhammer will be released at the end of this month.

Dawn of War III was originally mooted a multiplayer-focused title. It is unknown if this is still the plan or if the game will have a single-player campaign as well. In addition, it is unknown if the game will be a large-scale strategy game with base-building, like the original Dawn of War, or something more reminiscent of Diablo, as (highly controversially) was Dawn of War II. Relic's press hints that the game will hew closer to the original but it is unclear how much. From the trailer it looks like the game will focus on the Space Marines, Orks and Eldar as the initial factions, and the game will allow the deployment of Titans (massive armoured battle-mecha, hundreds of feet tall) in some fashion.

No release date has been announced, but the end of this year is likely the earliest release window.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

The planet Tartarus has come under heavy attack by the Orks, hard-pressing the planet's Imperial Guard defenders. The Blood Ravens chapter of Space Marines arrives to reinforce the planet and carry the fight to the Ork forces, but with both the Eldar and Chaos Marines also playing a role in events on the planet, it is clear that more is going on behind the scenes...


Released in 2004, Dawn of War was the first truly successful Warhammer 40,000 computer game. A real-time strategy game created by Relic, the team behind the excellent Homeworld series of strategy games, it was responsible for widening the appeal of WH40K in the United States and for also reinvigorating the RTS genre at a time when it was becoming moribund. The game spawned three expansions (Winter Assault, Dark Crusade and Soulstorm) and a sequel, Dawn of War II.

Dawn of War is a frustrating game. On the one hand it's straightforward to play, a lot of fun and does a good job of getting the WH40K universe (a place where the fascist, dictatorial and rather unpleasant Imperium of Man is presented as the 'good' side only because everyone else is so much worse) working in another medium to the wargames and novels. On the other hand, it's often slow to get going, dubiously plays fast and loose with the spirit of the setting, has an enormous (and never-addressed, despite numerous sequels) cliffhanger and, on both the strategic and tactical sides, is rather lacking.

Unlike its sequel, which adopted an RPG/RTS hybrid approach, Dawn of War is a straight-up RTS. You build a base, you build armies, you send them out to conquer. Dawn of War's innovation (which actually a few games had done earlier, but DoW popularised it) was that there was no resource-gathering. Instead you hold strategic points on the map. The more you hold, the more resources (requisition points) you get which can be used to summon reinforcements from your orbital warship, the Litany of Fury. Obviously the enemy makes it a priority to retake strategic points to slow your expansion. For this reason each strategic point can be fortified and defended with auto-cannons, allowing your troops to move on to the next target. Unfortunately, the time taken to fortify a strategic point is significant, meaning that turtling players may find even the smaller maps taking hours to complete as they crawl from point to point. More aggressive players who prefer to take points and move on may find themselves having to frustratingly double-back every few minutes to retake captured points. It has to be said that the strategic point system in Dawn of War is not implemented as well as it is in Company of Heroes, the WWII game that uses the same engine (a recurring problem, although obviously not at the time of release).

The other problem is in the depiction of the Space Marines themselves. In the WH40K setting Space Marines are insanely tough ten-foot-tall super-warriors clad in power armour. One Space Marine is equal to several dozen of the ordinary human Imperial Guard or Orks, and can trounce most enemies without breaking a sweat. Dawn of War treats them pretty much as ordinary grunts. They die fairly easily (if not quite as easily as Imperial Guard, Chaos Cultists or basic Orks) and their weapons seem dramatically underpowered compared to most other depictions of them in fiction. However, the ability to reinforce them in the field with new troops and upgraded weapons and armour also, conversely, eventually renders them almost unbeatable, especially in numbers. Each level is therefore a fight for time as your initially vulnerable Space Marines expand across the map cautiously whilst you upgrade them, followed by a storming final assault on the mission objective. Once you get Terminator Marines and upgraded Predator Tanks on the last few missions, you are essentially invulnerable, resulting in a game that bizarrely gets easier as it goes along. You can actually use the standard Space Marines throughout and still win fairly straightforwardly, which makes researching or building new, more powerful units (one of the main appeals of many RTS games) redundant.

On the plus side the graphic design is cool and the level of detail in the units and in combat (with many units having unique combat animations when they fight one another) is still very impressive six years on. And whilst the game is far too easy and too short (only 11 missions and one playable faction in single-player, which is anaemic even by Relic's infamously thrifty standards), there's still a fair amount of fun to be had, especially when you factor in skirmish, multiplayer and the expansions. The story is okay, if uninspired, and the writing and voice-overs are well-handled, especially since the game doesn't entirely take itself seriously (especially with the Orks), although some of the po-faced Space Marine characters get a bit boring after a while.

Dawn of War (***) is an entertaining and time-passing RTS game but lacks the immense tactical depth of its successor, Company of Heroes, and also fails to adjust the genre's limitations to depict the WH40K factions more accurately (as its sequel does). The result is a game that is okay, but not a genre classic. It is available now in the 'complete edition' with its three expansions in the UK. Oddly, this edition no longer appears to be available in the USA, only the omnibus edition with the game and the first two expansions.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

Thirty-eight thousand years in the future, the Galaxy is gripped in a constant state of warfare. The million worlds of the Imperium of Man are under constant attack from hostile alien races. Whilst the billions-strong army of the Imperial Guard holds the lines, it is up to the thousand chapters of the genetically-engineered, highly-capable Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, to take the offensive.


In one small corner of the Imperium is sub-sector Aurelia, the three major worlds of which - Calderis, Typhon and Meridian - are the primary recruiting and base worlds for the Blood Raven chapter of the Space Marines. When the Orks mount a major assault on Calderis, the Blood Ravens respond and discover that the Eldar are trying to trigger a full-scale war between the two factions. Whilst the Space Marines attempt to eliminate both hostile alien forces, a Tyranid Hive Fleet also shows up to infest all three worlds, resulting in an exceptionally bloody battle to save the planets and their billions of inhabitants from certain death.

Dawn of War II takes place in the Warhammer 40,000 universe and is the sequel to the 2004 real-time strategy game Dawn of War and its three expansions, Winter Assault, Dark Crusade and Soulstorm. Once again, the player takes control of the Blood Raven chapter of the Space Marines and fights against various foes in the single-player campaign, whilst in multiplayer they can also control the Orks, Eldar and Tyranids in battle. The forthcoming Chaos Rising expansion will also add the Chaos Marine faction to the game. Whilst not directly controllable in battle, several missions see the Space Marines fighting alongside the Imperial Guard, who provide fire support and cannon fodder for the enemy forces.

The original Dawn of War was a satisfactorily enjoyable RTS, but it had several key problems: it was very short, the non-linear campaigns of the latter two expansions were dull and repetitive and it was very easy, particularly if you played as the Space Marines. Space Marines in the WH40K universe are one-man armies, each capable of annihilating dozens of enemies from other factions (their counterparts from the corrupted Chaos Marine faction excepted), and Dawn of War seemed unwilling to treat them in this manner or downgrade them fully to the status of just another army, meaning that they fell into a kind of halfway position where they were substantially tougher than most of the other factions in the game but also still weren't as powerful as they should be given the setting's lore. Their sheer toughness also meant they didn't need much in the way of tactics, upgrades or the addition of new units through the game. It was still possible to win the game with just the use of the basic Space Marine infantry type in the final mission.

Dawn of War II intelligently overcomes these problems by changing the single-player game entirely. It's now much more of an action-RPG along the lines of Diablo. There is no recruiting or building of new units mid-mission. Instead, you can order four units into each battle out of a pool of eventually six squads. Each squad is highly specialised in a certain field, with a heavy-weapons Devastator squad capable of laying down vast amounts of heavy fire whilst a jetpack-equipped Assault squad can drop into the midst of the enemy and engage them in heavy melee combat. This move away from strategic considerations - which were really limited in Dawn of War I anyway - to purely evaluating the tactical considerations of each engagement adds a lot to the game. Also, by removing the resource model (holding tactical strongpoints on the battle field) the game becomes one of movement, with the need to hold and defend resource-requisition sectors not slowing down the game as it did before. In addition, squads find 'wargear' (the equivalent to Diablo's loot) which they can equip between missions, such as better armour, heavier weapons or items that increase durability or damage potential. Squads also gain experience between engagements and can improve their fighting capabilities over time.

The single-player campaign is non-linear, with at any one time several missions available to the player on the three planets. If the player chooses to take one mission on one planet, enemy forces may advance on the other two, and in the case of the Tyranids ignoring one planet for too long a period of time may see it overrun and consumed. Whilst it's not exactly Total War, it does introduce interesting elements of strategy to the game. However, to avoid the problem of repetition from the latter two Dawn of War expansions, these semi-random combat and defence missions are frequently interrupted by key storyline missions which advance the overall course of the conflict.

Both the strategic map and the tactical battles work very well, and the game is considerably longer than the original. The number of missions you need to do to complete the game varies, but comes in at between 30 and 40 (contrasted to the original game's 17). You can also play the campaign in co-op with a friend, and there are numerous multiplayer options including a 'last stand' mode where you have to hold out for as long as possible against apparently infinite waves of enemies.

The game has been heavily criticised for moving away from the RTS model of Dawn of War, which I think is unfair. Dawn of War came out in the summer of 2004, between Ground Control II and Rome: Total War, and suffered in comparison to both games, not being as tactically enjoyable and inventive as the former or as strategically impressive as the latter. The game looked great and was fun to play, but it was also a bit lightweight and was far too easy. Relic have proven surprisingly intelligent and mature in realising that the Space Marines simply don't work as a traditional RTS side and constructing a new game concept that makes them shine without becoming too overpowering (since your Space Marines are often outnumbered 100 to 1 per mission, and losses can be incurred if you are not careful). It also allows them to create some extremely memorable characters in the case of the six squad commanders and their interactions with one another and their observations on life and war in the Imperium (although the ultra-cynical Cyrus really needs to get out more and chill out a bit).

There are, however, some other problems. Many of the battles take place on the same maps, which can get a bit boring the third or four time you visit them. There's also a strong sense of repetition to the early battles in the game, in which you have to fight your way across the map and kill a boss. This threatens to get tedious, but fortunately the game opens up into its more freeform stage just after this and the game becomes more enjoyable. If you're a huge RTS fan, than the absence of base-building and unit-construction may be disappointing, but conversely action-RPG fans will find a game that is much more appealing than the original. Slightly more annoying is the fact that you need both Games for Windows Live and Steam running to make the game work. Either one of these would be irksome, but having both running simultaneously takes up valuable memory (annoying with a game this memory-intensive), which is irritating.

Dawn of War II (****) is an enjoyable game with some great ideas and a solid action element to it. It's not the most original of titles, but is a rare example of developers identifying key issues in the original game and taking some pretty big steps to eliminate them. The game is available now on PC in the UK and USA.