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General Gaming / Dawn of War 2
« on: October 24, 2008, 07:32:36 PM »
Dawn of War II is just a few months away, so I figured it could use its own topic.
For the uninitiated, the first DOW was one of the most inventive RTS games of recent years, and a welcome breath of fresh air in a genre populated with StarCraft clones. You purchased troops in squads rather than as individuals, and could usually customize squads with a variety of weapons, depending upon what role you wanted them to fill. An army editor allowed you to alter your army's color patterns and banners. The Dark Crusade expansion added wargear for your commanders, which wasn't particularly new for an RTS, but that you could save up experience points to purchase said equipment over several battles certainly was. One of the most fulfilling aspects of upgrading your characters in such a way was that new equipment was visually represented on the battlefield; if you saved up to buy your commander a jetpack and a chainsword, sure enough, next mission you would see him with a jetpack strapped to his back and waving a chainsword about menacingly. Another interesting addition brought forth by DOW was the Morale system, meaning that most squads could only take so much psychological punishment before they would break and lose effectiveness until you removed them from combat to let their Morale meter refill. Because of the implementation of the Morale system, DOW remains one of the few RTS games in which a full retreat in the middle of a battle serves a strategic purpose.
DOW was based in the storied and beautifully detailed Warhammer 40,000 universe, a depressingly violent place in the distant future where most human beings exist in a fascist space empire beset on all sides by a myriad assortment of aggressive alien species. In this respect, this "Imperium of Man" is modeled somewhat after the twilight years of the Roman Empire, and each of the alien species (sometimes vaguely) represents a different foreign culture, heresy, or natural disaster that, when combined, brought mighty Rome to its knees. As many of you are probably aware, the Warhammer 40K mythos helped inspire much of the fiction in the beloved StarCraft series, so if you like the flavor of 'Craft, chances are you'll like 40K. If you pick up a 40K rulebook, you'll see a lot of grim artwork that looks like it crawled out of the mind of Hieronymus Bosch, and DOW did a pretty good job of capturing that twisted, desperate atmosphere.
The sequel, arriving in Spring '09, reworks the old game engine entirely. Based on one of creator Relic's previous RTS's, Company of Heroes, DOW 2 eliminates base-building completely in the single player campaign. You will only control a maximum of six squads of troops at a time, but each squad will be even more customizable and unique than before. Squad AI is rumored to be darned impressive, with Wikipedia stating that individual troops will rush to find cover when a firefight breaks out. The campaign mode adds further RPG aspects to the DOW franchise, with squads gaining experience over time and becoming deadlier the more battles they survive. The most exciting aspect of DOW 2, at least to me, is that for the first time ever, Tyranids will be a playable race. Tyranids are a popular race of extragalactic, quasi-crustacean biological constructs that were left out of the first DOW because their unusual nature was difficult to replicate in an RTS. I never thought Tyranids would see the light of day in an RTS, but I'm thankful to be eating crow this time. Other playable races will include the dementedly violent Space Orks, the manipulative and arrogant Eldar, and, of course, Warhammer 40K's poster boys, the Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes. Oh, and the graphics are nothing short of gorgeous. If you haven't already, check out some of these gameplay videos. http://www.dawnofwar2.com/us/videos
Is anyone else as excited about this game as I am? Frankly, I'm buying a new computer simply for the joy of playing this bad boy with the specs turned all the way up.
For the uninitiated, the first DOW was one of the most inventive RTS games of recent years, and a welcome breath of fresh air in a genre populated with StarCraft clones. You purchased troops in squads rather than as individuals, and could usually customize squads with a variety of weapons, depending upon what role you wanted them to fill. An army editor allowed you to alter your army's color patterns and banners. The Dark Crusade expansion added wargear for your commanders, which wasn't particularly new for an RTS, but that you could save up experience points to purchase said equipment over several battles certainly was. One of the most fulfilling aspects of upgrading your characters in such a way was that new equipment was visually represented on the battlefield; if you saved up to buy your commander a jetpack and a chainsword, sure enough, next mission you would see him with a jetpack strapped to his back and waving a chainsword about menacingly. Another interesting addition brought forth by DOW was the Morale system, meaning that most squads could only take so much psychological punishment before they would break and lose effectiveness until you removed them from combat to let their Morale meter refill. Because of the implementation of the Morale system, DOW remains one of the few RTS games in which a full retreat in the middle of a battle serves a strategic purpose.
DOW was based in the storied and beautifully detailed Warhammer 40,000 universe, a depressingly violent place in the distant future where most human beings exist in a fascist space empire beset on all sides by a myriad assortment of aggressive alien species. In this respect, this "Imperium of Man" is modeled somewhat after the twilight years of the Roman Empire, and each of the alien species (sometimes vaguely) represents a different foreign culture, heresy, or natural disaster that, when combined, brought mighty Rome to its knees. As many of you are probably aware, the Warhammer 40K mythos helped inspire much of the fiction in the beloved StarCraft series, so if you like the flavor of 'Craft, chances are you'll like 40K. If you pick up a 40K rulebook, you'll see a lot of grim artwork that looks like it crawled out of the mind of Hieronymus Bosch, and DOW did a pretty good job of capturing that twisted, desperate atmosphere.
The sequel, arriving in Spring '09, reworks the old game engine entirely. Based on one of creator Relic's previous RTS's, Company of Heroes, DOW 2 eliminates base-building completely in the single player campaign. You will only control a maximum of six squads of troops at a time, but each squad will be even more customizable and unique than before. Squad AI is rumored to be darned impressive, with Wikipedia stating that individual troops will rush to find cover when a firefight breaks out. The campaign mode adds further RPG aspects to the DOW franchise, with squads gaining experience over time and becoming deadlier the more battles they survive. The most exciting aspect of DOW 2, at least to me, is that for the first time ever, Tyranids will be a playable race. Tyranids are a popular race of extragalactic, quasi-crustacean biological constructs that were left out of the first DOW because their unusual nature was difficult to replicate in an RTS. I never thought Tyranids would see the light of day in an RTS, but I'm thankful to be eating crow this time. Other playable races will include the dementedly violent Space Orks, the manipulative and arrogant Eldar, and, of course, Warhammer 40K's poster boys, the Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes. Oh, and the graphics are nothing short of gorgeous. If you haven't already, check out some of these gameplay videos. http://www.dawnofwar2.com/us/videos
Is anyone else as excited about this game as I am? Frankly, I'm buying a new computer simply for the joy of playing this bad boy with the specs turned all the way up.
