Dawn of War III: first details

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 15 June, 2011

Relic "going back to 1 on some things".

THQ has teased a new direction for upcoming real-time strategy game Dawn of War III.

Developer Relic is taking elements from the first game and the second game and adding something new, THQ core games boss Danny Bilson told Eurogamer.

"We're working on the next-generation of that franchise right now," Bilson said.

"I feel like an ass saying it's fantastic, but it is. And we're going to do something with it you haven't seen before.

"Preserving some things that have always been great about the first two generations of it, going back to 1 on some things, 2 on some things, and 3 will bring us some new things.

"When you see it you're going to go, whoa. I promise."

Last year Eurogamer broke the news that Relic was in the brainstorming stage of Dawn of War III.

Bilson suggested the Warhammer 40K RTS would launch between 18 months and two years after Dawn of War II - Retribution, pegging DOWIII for the August 2012 to February 2013 window.

He also said the game may "be a more digital free-to-play experience with all the depth and quality of a Relic RTS" - depending on the performance of Company of Heroes Online.

Given that game didn't work out, will Dawn of War III take a more traditional approach?

"Now Dawn of War III, either way, is going to have a much larger strategic component to it, more of a global battle going on with little tactical things, sort of MMO-like," Bilson continued.

Yesterday Bilson teased the reveal of an unannounced game at Gamescom in Germany in August. Could Dawn of War III be it?

"I can say that crowd, those hundreds of thousands of people, in that space at that time, this one's built to announce at that place. I'll say that. That's my clue."

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (27) Latest comment 11 months ago

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  • SClaw #1 11 months ago

    FFS! Not every game has to have some crazy online thing. Just give me a deep, solid single player campaign (and some more units to control, pretty please, I can manage more than four things at once thank you) and keep the MP from DoW2. Change nothing more. Dont screw around with online services - Relic is SHIT at online services (see - all games they've ever made).

    Why... why must you mess with the things I love???

  • berelain #2 11 months ago

    Yay!

    I loved DoW and DoW II, but I did miss some of the base building and larger-scale strategy in the second game.

  • bloodthirsty1 #3 11 months ago

    What about Company of Heroes 2 ? :|

  • Wahoffelmadenga #4 11 months ago

    My wishlist:
    More races than you can shake a stick at
    A campaign where I can play something other than space marines (preferably all of the races in the game)
    A story that doesn't go -> Orks are attacking, Eldar are aggravating them, Eldar are actually trying to save themselves from Chaos / Tyranids

  • CamberGreber #5 11 months ago

    They need to rescale the graphics so characters and buildings are in prepotion to each other.

  • sweatyBallacks #6 11 months ago

    I loved DoWII but Relic's decision to get rid of base-building seemed like a cop-out against Starcraft 2 as in 'we can't compete with that game on that level, let#s take the game in a different direction' kinda way. Honourable and all that, but actually, if you look around the genere, there aren't any really great modern base-building competitive RTS's aside from Starcraft 2, so DoW could really challenge it if they brought base-building back into an improved sequel.

  • subedii #7 11 months ago

    For the singleplayer campaign, having it focus on the core heroes and turning it into more of an RPG / RTS hybrid was a good idea. They had the seeds of something good going with it in DoW 2, and in Chaos Rising they largely got the formula and the gameplay right. Especially if you played the campaigns coop on hard with a friend, then it really turned into something awesome.

    Unfortunately Retribution took a bit of a back step with the campaign, because people were angsting over wanting to play ALL races in the SP. So they did, except as a result it turned into effectively 1 campaign with 6 different perspectives and a storyline / characters that they couldn't handle as in-depth as they could before. Chaos Rising actually surprised me, because it was one of the few times that an RTS campaign has actually kept me interested in its story and events. Retribution, well, there were still some interesting goings on, but once you've played it through a couple times with your favourite races, there's not much incentive to do the rest.

    WRT to the multiplayer, I liked the way they streamlined the base development. In real terms, plopping down buildings and making builder units didn't do much for the gameplay. What they had was still teching, they just took the faffing about out of it, and made the focus more on the squad leve combat, which I felt suited the gameplay better.

    A sequel could go either way WRT base building and general army sizes, I just hope they keep that emphasis on squad level combat, and don't try to shoehorn in unsuitable base building mechanics that detract from that emphasis. The last thing I want to see in Dawn of War 3, is having to click on my home base at 30 seconds, every 30 seconds on the dot, to build another freaking worker unit. Or having the base management in general become a core focus that distracts from the actual in-the-field combat.

    That's really not what the game's about, and it's why you don't need to even click on your "home" base building to start a new unit off, you can just press the icon on the side and select the unit you want. And heck, why you can even simply right-click the unit icon and have it auto-start when you have the resources. That's something that games like Starcraft deliberately don't have, because they view base micromanagement as being part of the "core" of the gameplay. It's that emphasis on APM nuttiness that tends to make me prefer DoW's multiplayer model to Starcraft's (as much hate as saying that might get me).
    Edited by subedii at 15/06/11 @ 10:36

  • Murton #8 11 months ago

    Bring back the scale of the first one and give us a shedload of races from the get-go. I'd also quite happily accept a handful of short campaigns for each race than a single large one for the Marines yet again.

    In fact, just remake Dark Crusade with shinier graphics and new units and you'll have a winner.

  • Freki #9 11 months ago

    Regardless of what they do with it 40K is my weakness so I will still buy the game. That and big stompy robots. So if Relic really want to fleece me, make an Adeptus Titanicus game...

  • subedii #10 11 months ago

    Balance is always a tenuous thing in the DoW games, and it just gets exponentially more complex with each race added.

    I'm happy enough that they tend to start off with 4 races and then move it up from there. Aside from the ridiculous workload you're asking of them (already strained when you've got that many races), balancing something like six or more races right from the start is freaking impossible and would probably just be a fuster cluck at launch and for a long time following.

    One thing I will say though: Given how successful it's been, I expect will be seeing some kind of future evolution of the Last Stand concept. That's done so well they even spun it out into its own stand-alone that you can buy separate from the main game.

    I also hope that for the core multiplayer they'll keep the "Commander" units for each faction. Really gave scope for you to tailor each race's play style, what with variations and wargear options.
    Edited by subedii at 15/06/11 @ 10:43

  • RoOhDaMite #11 11 months ago

    Bring it for the Wii U!

  • Murton #12 11 months ago

    "I'm happy enough that they tend to start off with 4 races and then move it up from there. Aside from the ridiculous workload you're asking of them (already strained when you've got that many races), balancing something like six or more races right from the start is freaking impossible and would probably just be a fuster cluck at launch and for a long time following."

    With the latest patch Dark Crusade is pretty close to being balanced, the only real issue is that because the game doesn't use hard counters of any kind some units have a critical mass at which point they become nigh on unstoppable. Dark Crusade + CoH style counters = win

  • subedii #13 11 months ago

    I'm actually glad they stuck with introducing just one race with each expansion, instead of two. It helped a lot for the multiplayer balance. That plus the beta meant that there were actually comparatively few issues when they eventually got around to introducing Imperial Guard in Retribution.

    Oh man I look forward to a DoW 3 beta.

    Anyway, for anyone interested in DoW2's multiplayer, I heartily recommend Harlequin's shoutcasts.

    [link url=http://www.youtube.com/user/HarlequinCasts
    ]http://www.youtube.com/user/HarlequinCasts
    [/link]

    He's in China at the minute, but there's plenty of matches on his channel and he does a pretty good job of shoutcasting them. Personally I tend to prefer to play 3v3's, but I understand 1v1's are the norm and are better for shoutcasting. 3v3's have stuff happening everywhere all the time.

    He also does the occasional Company of Heroes shoutcast as well, which are awesome (he started off shoutcasting CoHO IIRC).

  • chiefian #14 11 months ago

    Take some elements from 2 and most elements from 1 and you're onto a winning game there THQ.

    WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH

  • Sunyavadin #15 11 months ago

    Continuing playing the original DoW until you BLOODY WELL GIVE US HW3, RELIC!

  • anomagnus #16 11 months ago

    I preferred DOW 2, to be honest, as massive 40k lorefiend. I know the base building is important in RTS's, but it didn't make sense to me. The losses i sustained in DOW1 would have had Angelos censured to the point of ex-communication from the ravens.

    In DOW2, they were smaller scale battles, but were very similar to what you might see in a black library book.

    I'd like DOW3 to maybe stay closer to the fluff, but try to add a more RTS nature to it. Access to a full battle barge, approx 100 marines maybe 10 scouts. But as you lose marines, that’s it, they’re gone. Victory would be as dependent on how many marines were left, as enemies killed.

  • subedii #17 11 months ago

    Yeah losing a squad in DoW2 multiplayer was definitely a bigger blow.

    In real terms, base building didn't add much. The whole purpose of placing down separate buildings at your base was to provide a sunk-cost time and monetary investment requirement to teching up to those units (basically the tension between getting stuff now and teching to higher tier units which will be available later). Which DoW2 still has, they just streamlined the process so you're not telling Servitors to build a barracks on the field before you can start pumping out Space Marines. Here you still pay the time and resource cost, you just don't have to do it via playing SimCity on the side.

    Instead, the units themselves ARE the investment. They're more valuable and costly, and they're more upgradeable. And in general the squad level gameplay mechanics are more in-depth as well.
    Edited by subedii at 15/06/11 @ 12:37

  • Lin #18 11 months ago

    i'd really rather have a total war style sandbox campaign system on randomly generated worlds, then fight battles in real time with the units i have trained. base building sucks because it was never a part of 40k strategy. but neither is dungeon crawling (DOW2 single player) or hotkey competetitions to be in as many places as possible at once (DOW2 multi player).

    i hope this is what they mean.

  • G-Money #19 11 months ago

    Switched to Ruse when they got rid of base building....

  • Inmediasress #20 11 months ago

    So in other words it will be spellforce style warhammer 40k with a freemium model.
    That sounds silly.

  • Zaiz #21 11 months ago

    The freemium stuff was from the pre-CoHO failure DoWIII.

    More importantly, they hinted at Homeworld 3 a few years ago(I think), so where is it, Relic? HW2 still looks fantastic and makes me chuckle at all these modern space sims when it comes to graphical quality and battle awesomeness. The problem is it is very incompatible with widescreens.

  • Davemanz #22 11 months ago

    Haters gonna hate, DoWII multiplayer (while unconventional) is absolutely fantastic. A more measured pace for people who don't like StarCraft II. I'm sure whatever the model is for this it'll be great, knowing Relic.

    And let's hope the new reveal is Homeworld 3 rather than DoW III or CoH 2.

  • azix2 #23 11 months ago

    Where the hell is company of heroes 2? Come the fack on

  • Davemanz #24 11 months ago

    @Zaiz: You can tweak HW2 to make it work in widescreen. Just Google "Homeworld 2 Widescreen" for instructions. It looks fantastic.

  • jimr9999us #25 11 months ago

    I didn't miss the base building in DoW2...I did miss the bold colors/cartoony element of DoW1 though. It really made the violence over the top. I didn't get the same effect with the animations in 2...but I did love the hero advancement and mechanics of 2.

    So, in a nutshell, give me DoW2 with a little bit more soul:)

  • Gastrian #26 11 months ago

    Post deleted at 17:56:43 13-04-2012

  • subedii #27 11 months ago

    @Lin

    "or hotkey competetitions to be in as many places as possible at once (DOW2 multi player). "

    Er... I think you might be thinking of Starcraft 2 there. DoW2 is a relatively slow paced RTS, the number of actions you have to carry out in any given minute are fairly limited (even on a 1v1, and on a 2v2 or 3v3 even less so) the skill ceiling's actually quite low (I should know, otherwise I'd probably have a hard time playing it just from a mechanics perspective, which really isn't where the difficulty comes from). This is largely owing to the fact that you're dealing with a relatively small number of squads and most importantly, no base management in between.

    Seriously, if you want an idea of what you're actually currently describing, go ahead and look up some high level Starcraft 2 matches, preferably from the fixed viewpoint of one of the competitors.
    Edited by subedii at 15/06/11 @ 18:54