Warhammer 40,000 has an intimidating number of books about the universe out there, and almost equally intimidating amount of games. You can easily spend dozens of hours in online battles, which was exactly the case with me and the original Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, the Winter Assault & Soulstorm DLC that could utterly warp your concept of time by sucking you in for days. Now, Relic Entertainment is back with Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition, but let’s take a step back before we talk about the remaster.
In the early 2000s, the RTS market (and especially its competitive segment) was completely dominated by Blizzard with its WarCraft III and StarCraft. The emergence of a new discipline immediately attracted the attention of e-sportsmen.
Dawn of War, released a year after The Frozen Throne, offered impressive graphics for its time as well as a noticeable focus on competition. At World Cyber Games 2005, the prize pool for Dawn of War was comparable to that of StarCraft, which attracted many new players to try out the title.
In 2006, after the release of Winter Assault and the fifth faction, the Imperial Guard, the game still remained balanced and had been included in the WCG06 list. Back then, it seemed like the birth of a new cybersport discipline was upon us, but Relic Entertainment instead focused on content expansions. The following, Dark Crusade, unfortunately finally crossed the game out of the virtual competitions.
Before the release of the original Dawn of War, the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game had an almost elitist air. Due to the weak development of the Internet and the lack of official sets in most cities, it was extremely difficult to join this hobby, and there were almost no random participants.
Another huge problem was access to information – or the lack of it. The only thing on the Internet was the so-called “Fluff Bible”, a Microsoft Word document that served as an info dump on the facts about the universe, compiled into a single heap from various sources. In addition, at the time of DoW’s release, the Blood Raven order was not yet canon, and the events of the game had not been mentioned in any official sources.
Just imagine what happened after the release. A whole horde of newbies flocked to the Warhammer board game forums with questions like “They have already made a Warhammer board game?” or “Where can I find models for my favorite legion, the Blood Ravens?”
This caused a storm of negativity to erupt among the old community, that not only had been nasty to the newbies, but also hated the game for casualizing the once “elite” hobby. The irony is that the vast majority of the current Warhammer experts and players came from those curious casuals, and this is who the remaster is aimed at.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition includes all the released DLC, with a reasonable price tag.
Upon starting the remaster, players are greeted by an updated introductory video, familiar to anyone who’s played the original. The developers have significantly increased the resolution and frame rate, making it look lively and atmospheric.
The interface has been redesigned: the updated UI is adapted to work with the modern monitors, a new camera and additional control options have been added, making the overall gameplay more comfortable. In addition to the main story campaign and the DLC, the battle modes against the AI and other players have been introduced. The remaster also kept the support of the original mods, of which there’s a huge number out there.
However, despite the positive notions above, the pink glasses crack upon the first start screen. For comparison, in the overall unsuccessful Warcraft III: Reforged, the team completely reworked the outdated models of units and buildings, and together with brand-new textures they look more than decent.
In Dawn of War – Definitive Edition, pretty much nothing had been updated or fixed, which is why we have the pleasure of staring at a low-poly character, albeit with fresher textures.
Upon launching the first mission, you will once again be able to witness just how bad the models look after 20 years, especially in high resolution that makes every flaw even more noticeable.
The situation is further complicated when you launch the DLC scenarios. The original introductory video had been remade, but the rest of the intros weren’t improved in any way. Even though they’re created using the game engine, they weren’t reshot or upscaled. The same can be said about the arts on the loading screens, which weren’t re-drawn, and stretching to fit modern formats only turned them into a blurry mess.
After a few missions, your eyes will eventually get used to the graphics, and the new camera only allows you to see the models up close during the story dialogues. Despite all the visual shortcomings, Dawn of War remains a great way to immerse yourself in the Warhammer 40,000 universe: it offers an interesting plot, charismatic characters, and hours upon hours of strategic battles.
It is worth separately noting the numerous mods released for the original game, now fully compatible with the remaster.
All the old bugs are still here, and the game even grabbed a few new ones. The textures have been upscaled, sure, just as the troop portraits. Except… it seems they were upscaled by a lazy designer that let the AI do the entire job without any changes. In online battles for 4–6 players, the game starts to lag, units get stuck in textures, the new lighting plays so badly on the “recycled” textures – it would have been better if it didn’t exist at all. The only thing that had been done competently is the new camera.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition is an example of the most lazy remaster of the past five or so years. It feels as if the developers took someone’s mods for camera upgrades, resolution and texture packs, patched it into the old game, and sold it to the fans again.
Fix bugs? No, thank you. Work on text and localization? No need. Address the crappy balance of Soulstorm? God forbid. Fix performance? A remastered game is lagging on the powerful modern PCs, and the team doesn’t really care. There is also no new content, this is simply the upscaled original + its three main DLC that had been pushed into a single launcher. Shadows, highlights, some small edits of animations, and an entire one whole new coloring for the Space Marines faction (and nothing for the rest).
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition Impressions only gives a small feeling of nostalgia, which I had bought into and already regret it.
