The preview event for Dawn of War IV begins with a surprising mea culpa. A recognition that Dawn of War II and III didn’t meet the expectations of players, and a promise a return to the style of the most well received entry in the series – the original Dawn of War. All this coming from a development team entirely new to the series.
Dawn of War IV’s development is being handled by KING Art, a team based in Bremen, Germany. They’re new to the Dawn of War series, but not new to the real-time strategy (RTS) genre by any stretch – having worked previously on Iron Harvest, an RTS set in an alternate reality 1920.
After a quick primer on the series up to now, I got access to a preview build of the game itself. It’s definitely in a preview state, assets are clearly not quite finished and optimisations have yet to happen, but it gives a good window into KING Art’s intentions with the game.
I’m placed into a skirmish where I control a squad of Space Marines under siege by Orks. After fending off an initial wave of the creatures, I get to establishing a base of operations. There are resource points nearby, which I can capture to start accumulating the materials I need to construct buildings and recruit units.
Resource points can be taken back by enemies so they need defending. Since Space Marines don’t typically field large armies, I build some turrets around it to alert me of attacks, fend off smaller bands of Orks and buy me some time to respond to larger incursions.
Exploring further, I find some groups of enemies who take out a few of my units. This is where I discover that I can reinforce units to recover ones lost in battle, manually or automatically if I have the resources to spare. I can also customise unit loadouts to improve their effectiveness in specific situations. The longer they remain alive and win battles, they gain more experience which also improves their effectiveness.
Amongst these battles, I took a moment to zoom the camera in to see how things look up close. Especially when melee units are involved, there are some really cool looking animations and one-on-one fights going on. It’s something that doesn’t really make a strategic difference and you might not even see it from a typical viewpoint – but I appreciate the effort. Flourishes like these dramatic fight sequences add good flavour to proceedings.
Back at base with all these resources, I could get to building out new structures which get me access to new unit types, vehicles and research upgrades. It’s fairly standard RTS stuff. Space Marines can build anywhere – which comes in handy when defending newly captured resource points. You have to account for one thing though, and it’s that their buildings take longer to complete the further they are from home base. It means structures can be used effectively near the front line of battle as support, but might need some pre-planning to give them time to complete.
As well as deploying buildings anywhere on the map, Space Marines can recruit units in reserve ready to deploy anywhere on the map at a moment’s notice. This can be incredibly useful to defend from an attack while your main army is far away, or can be used as a shock and awe tactic to overwhelm your opponent from an unexpected direction while a fight is going on. It’s something I can see being incredibly fun to deploy in a multiplayer skirmish.
Ultimately, the preview build I got to play was a tiny, tiny slice of the full game. Only being able to play on one map, as one faction against one opponent in one scenario – there’s only so much to be gleaned from it. But what I played had potential. The promise of my beloved Necrons returning alongside a faction entirely new to Dawn of War with the Adeptus Mechanicus gives me a lot to look forward to. If the full game lives up to the developer’s lofty promises it could be an RTS force to be reckoned with.