Dawn of War 4 was announced during Gamescom opening night on August 20, with a trailer that showed off gameplay footage for the RTS.
This upcoming Warhammer 40k game will feature four factions on launch, each with their own campaign. The Blood Ravens and Orks are shoe-ins at this point, but two other armies are also included: the Necrons and the Adeptus Mechanicus.
That last Warhammer 40k faction has never appeared in the RTS series, so it’s neat that Dawn of War fans have a chance to play them for the first time outside of modded content. Their appearance alongside the Necrons obviously puts us in mind of the XCOM-like turn-based tactics game Mechanicus.
Unlike every other Dawn of War game before it, Dawn of War 4 is not being developed by Relic Entertainment, creators of Age of Empires 4 and Company of Heroes. Instead, Games Workshop has bestowed the task upon King Art games, a German developer best known for its dieselpunk mecha RTS, Iron Harvest.
Released in 2021, that game features an alternate history version of WW1, takes place in the same setting as the strategy board game Scythe, and currently has a 75% Mostly Positive rating on Steam.
While Iron Harvest adherents are obviously delighted by the news, some Warhammer fans have expressed worries about the new developer. But after the atrocious reception of the third game in the series, which had a playerbase of less than 500 people within a year of launch, it’s not so strange that GW would make the decision to switch things up.
Dawn of War III went down extremely poorly with the playerbase, though it’s hard to pin down precisely what was wrong from it. It was certainly very different from Dawn of War 2 (which was itself a big departure from Dawn of War), incorporating some MOBA-like elements, and with a greater focus on heroes.
Fans missed the more complex combat systems like cover and flanking that DoW 2 featured and found 3’s campaign content (there was just the one campaign which cycled between factions) very lacklustre in terms of both story and gameplay.
That’s probably why GW is emphasizing the singleplayer over the multiplayer content here, advertising a total of 70+ singleplayer missions split between the four factions. The devs have also got a Black Library author on board for the story, with John French – writer of the Ahriman series – co-authoring the campaign.
A potential spoiler right there in the trailer, it looks like a major character, Scout Sergeant Cyrus, bites the dust in a cutscene. I mean, he’s alive and well as a hero in a snippet of gameplay footage, so perhaps the rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated. But then there are multiple shots of him getting stabbed by a Necron and then having a flag placed over his corpse. Maybe he’ll come back in Dreadnought form?
From what little gameplay footage has been shown, Dawn of War 4 looks to be taking inspiration from the first game (the Steam page does claim it’s ‘returned to its roots’), with a heavy emphasis on base-building. You can find out more about how it’ll play from our friends at PCGamesN, who’ve run through a demo, the lucky things!
Are you hyped for Dawn of War 4, or are you sticking with the DOW1 remaster? Let us know on the Wargamer Discord. And don’t miss our great guides like this one on all the Warhammer 40k Primarchs.