Dawn of War 2 Announced, I rejoice

Walking_Man

Veteran X
So apparently several PC gaming magazines hitting shelves about now have info about Dawn of War 2. I stole this list of confirmed info from some other forum:

The intel (gathered from the preview and an interview with Producer Mark Noseworthy in the same Belgian magazine, PC Gameplay):

- Uses the Essence 2.0 engine with Havok physics, all optimised for DX10 and multicore support.
- It looks great, think of the DoW intro but with a bit less polygons here and there (in terms of lighting and all that it looks almost exactly the same).
- Units also use CoH-like unit AI for awareness and pathfinding to find cover and such.
- While DoW 2 shares the same (upgraded probably) engine as CoH it won't be "CoH in space",/B] while soldiers in CoH will ask themselves if flanking the enemy is the right option, in DoW2 it will be more like Space Marines asking themselves if they should use their jetpacks to jump over an Ork squad to attack them in the back. Different settings, different kinds of warfare.
- Preview only showed a destroyed city landscape, akin to DoW (but more detailed), other tilesets will offer deserts, jungles, mountains and other cities.
- Only the Orkz and Space Marines were revealed, more races on the way obviously and to be to revealed later this year (though how many isn't known).
- Co-op campaign for both the Orkz and Space Marines, apparently not for the other to-be-revealed races.
- More focus on making units and squads unique; every unit has got a name (at least in the campaign it seems), more details and more animations.
- Relic wants to give players rewards at the end of a mission like wargear (armor, weapons, rare objects); "Let's pimp out squads with cool stuff!", you will see these items in-game as well of course.
- You'll fight your way through the campaign with the same squads.
- You can't control more than six squads! I am not sure if this is campaign-only but the preview made it sound like it wasn't.
- The squads are going to be a lot more interesting than before though.
- A squad leader (one or several?) will need to survive if you want to complete a mission; you really have to look out for your squads and don't treat them like cannon fodder.
- There is a lot more interesting commentary from the units as well; if your SM commander is holding a Thunder Hammer f.e. then the opponent will specifically comment on that, Ork Warchief saying something like "Ooh, nice hammer, but mine is bigger!". The warchief will say something else if the commander doesn't have the hammer.
- The campaign lets Space Marines operate from a spaceship, you'll get a view of an underlying planet and you'll be able to choose from different missions (which are tagged with difficulty colours, green, blue and red).
- Certain reward items won't be useable at once in the campaign, so they'll be taken back to the SM spaceship for research.
- Dreadnought can now also trample Orkz.
- No sea or air units (though jetpacks are still in of course).
- Development team of 55 people has been working on it since September 2006.
- Release in early 2009 or later.
-Buildings can be occupied (like in coh)
-Environment completely destructable ^^
-Vehicles are bigger (there were only a couple of dreadnought shots)
-LOTS of blood (i saw the screens and thought LOL)
-Over the top finishing animations
-when units are in melee, pieces of battle armor can be chopped off in the action

I'm still looking for scans of the screen shots but no luck so far. Here's something to hold you over:
dowti2.jpg

dow2tk3.jpg

dow3pt7.jpg

dow4bs8.jpg

dow5so4.jpg
 
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fuck yeah

also, that pic is one of my favorites. The emperor is like, o no you didn't, now I'm PISSED. Horus is like, whatever, I'll do what I want, whatever.
 
Sounds nice, but I hope they throw out the bit about keeping commanders alive. What's a war game if you don't have cannon fodder?
 
I, for one, surely hope more players will play multi than DoW has right now because having 10 online games at once is fucking pathetic for such a good game.
 
I, for one, surely hope more players will play multi than DoW has right now because having 10 online games at once is fucking pathetic for such a good game.

Expansions always divide people up. DoW had a very active multiplayer scene before it's first expansion.
 
Expansions always divide people up. DoW had a very active multiplayer scene before it's first expansion.

That could probably explain why they get the green light to develop DoW2. Then again, why don't they merge all the lobbies into one? A big patch could simply allows people that do not have expansions to play vs players that have them while not unlocking the races for them hence increasing the pool. I'm stuck playing 2vs2 with a friend vs comp all the time. We want to play vs other humans :(
 
That could probably explain why they get the green light to develop DoW2. Then again, why don't they merge all the lobbies into one? A big patch could simply allows people that do not have expansions to play vs players that have them while not unlocking the races for them hence increasing the pool. I'm stuck playing 2vs2 with a friend vs comp all the time. We want to play vs other humans :(

Why not play against each other? :eek:
 
I wonder if there's going to be a suppression system or something similar. CoH did away with the morale system, but that didn't work quite as well as intended to begin with, so I'm wondering what they've turned it into now.
 
I wonder if there's going to be a suppression system or something similar. CoH did away with the morale system, but that didn't work quite as well as intended to begin with, so I'm wondering what they've turned it into now.

I can't imagine them getting rid of morale in DoW2 since it's such a big part of the tabletop game. I'm sure it'll use the same suppression and cover system that CoH has with tweaks to make it more appropriate for a game with people wearing huge suits of armor (except for the guardsmen, those guys are fucked).
 
I really don't like the idea of not having cannon fodder units in a DoW game. I mean you never really intentionally used yours troops as cannon fodder but the very nature of the fights usually made it a massacre and that's how it's supposed to be imo.
 
I doubt it will work like that. It's probably just the same thing as "Keep this hero alive or you lose the mission" that has been in RTSes since the dawn of time.
 
6 squads max? :ugh:

1. Less squads = boo
2. Larger vehicles = yay
3. End of mission rewards = yay
4. More detailed game = yay
5. Improved AI = yay
 
Uses the Essence 2.0 engine with Havok physics, all optimised for DX10 and multicore support.

That's all I needed, done deal. CoH gameplay dominates DoW. Can't wait to see the upgrades.
 
I really don't like the idea of not having cannon fodder units in a DoW game. I mean you never really intentionally used yours troops as cannon fodder but the very nature of the fights usually made it a massacre and that's how it's supposed to be imo.

I'm guessing they want to make it more like CoH where you throw in your units as cannon fodder and then retreat before the entire squad gets annihilated. I doubt they'd get rid of the retreat system considering how innovative it was in CoH and how it radically changes gameplay (for the better imo).
 
Those bulletpoints came from a translation of an article in a Belgian magazine, I'm sure there's translation mistakes and just plain misunderstandings from the article's author. I wouldn't stress about the "no cannon fodder" and "6 squad cap" thing.
 
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