I didn’t appreciate that the first time I played it, though. For most of my life, I had chugged Blizzard’s kool-aid & assumed Warhammer was a cheap knock-off for grown men who lượt thích gluing things together và spending £20 on tiny vials of paint with ridiculous names like Runelord Brass. But if you read last month’s Reinstall, you’ll know that James and I both recently decided khổng lồ read some Warhammer 40k novels for the first time & instantly became converts. That naturally meant I had no choice but to lớn consume all Warhammer truyền thông I could possibly find, & with Dawn of War and its expansions sitting in my Steam library, it was a natural place khổng lồ start. I just wanted something khổng lồ tickle my fancy for this new universe I suddenly developed an appetite for—but I didn’t expect this to lớn rocket to lớn the đứng đầu of my favourite RTS games.
(Image credit: Relic Entertainment)
Rip và tear
First released back in 2004, Dawn of War follows a chapter of Space Marines called the Blood Ravens as they work lớn delay an Ork ‘WAAAGH!’ (40k parlance for ‘unstoppable invasion’) while the last human inhabitants of Tartarus regroup & flee the planet. Once Chaos Marines & Eldar start getting involved, though, the whole operation goes sideways as ancient demonic artefacts whisper betrayal và an impending warpstorm—basically an evil space hurricane—threatens to lớn trap everyone on a planet overrun by Orks và demons.
That Dawn of War’s story manages lớn be this interesting decades later is a testament to how fun it is despite being so thoroughly incapable of nuance. Lượt thích many of the novels, its plot twists are seen coming miles away, but I don’t care because I’m too enchanted by the stoicism of the Blood Ravens captain, Gabriel Angelos, and his too-wise-for-his- own-good Librarian Isador. A lot of it is buoyed by the voice acting, though, which manages khổng lồ somehow bring a bit of life khổng lồ a group of super-soldiers who are only capable of feeling either righteous indignation or anger.
You don’t play Dawn of War for the story, though. You play it lớn gleefully watch a crab-like Chaos Marine Defiler wade into a group of Space Marines, pluck one up with its enormous mechanical claw, and toss his crumpled toàn thân half-way across the map. I feel like it’s moments like this that are missing from other RTS games of that era, especially Warcraft 3. There’s almost a kind of disregard for the spectacle of watching giant fantasy armies clash in battle. Units just hit each other with the same attack animations until one dies.
(Image credit: Relic Entertainment)
Dawn of War relishes in the violence. Every unit has bespoke ‘sync kills’ that trigger when they giảm giá khuyến mãi the killing blow against an enemy. When the Eldar summon the Avatar of Khaine in the seventh mission of the base campaign, much of the reason it’s so terrifying is not just because it takes half an army to kill. It’s terrifying because again and again it’ll impale Space Marines on its sword và hoist them upward so that gravity slowly pulls them further down onto the sword amid gouts of blood. Often I’m so caught up with zooming in & rotating the camera khổng lồ watch the carnage that I forget to feed my units new orders. I just want khổng lồ soak it all in.
It’s a system that only works because Dawn of War uses a chất lượng squad system where individual units are actually composed of up to nine soldiers who act in unison. It’s such a great deviation from the standard RTS formula where a single soldier represents a single unit, not only because it adds some significant layers of strategy—like being able to purchase weapon upgrades for individual members of a unit or reinforce your damaged units with fresh recruits—but because it also adds a lot more meat lớn the grinder.
That’s not the only innovation that makes Dawn of War still relevant today, however. It also disposes with the resource collection systems that I’ve come to lớn despise in games like StarCraft only because it’s so fiddly. It’s not fun having to lớn constantly micromanage whether or not my worker units are accessing the right resources back at base instead of pushing deeper into the maps and watching fights break out.
(Image credit: Relic Entertainment)
Taking control
Instead, resources are earned by spreading out & grabbing control points. Even by today’s standards, it’s such a genius evolution because it directly ties combat lớn your overall wealth và economy—especially in multiplayer where players are actively working to lớn defeat one another. There’s no option khổng lồ just turtle up inside your base và wait for players to come to lớn you because you’ll also be starving yourself. You have to be aggressive.
Obviously that kind of playstyle makes perfect sense in the Warhammer universe. Hell, even the opening cinematic for Dawn of War shows an entire squad of Blood Ravens getting decimated by Orks while trying khổng lồ take a control point seconds before an army of Space Marines arrives khổng lồ save the day. They could’ve just hunkered down and waited, but that’s not the Space Marine way. That kind of wanton disregard for the individual sacrifice so long as it translates khổng lồ increased control of the bản đồ infuses Dawn of War with a brutality you just don’t see in other similar RTS games.
(Image credit: Relic Entertainment)
It’s just a shame that Relic hasn’t found a way to update the base game to run better on modern hardware. While the second expansion, Dark Crusade, introduces tư vấn for more wide aspect ratios, Dawn of War can only handle 1920x1440, which creates borders on the left & right of the screen and noticeably cuts down on how much you can see on the map. There’s a widescreen fix but it warps the form size of the minimap so that it no longer fits within its borders, effectively cutting off pieces of it from your view.
I can deal with that, though, but it’s enormously frustrating that you can’t even bind certain keys. I didn’t even know that there was a pause button until a friend mentioned it, but it’s bound to lớn the Pause key, which I don’t have on my smaller keyboard. My only option was to download a program called AutoHotKey, which can rebind keys at a system level.
It’s why I wish Dawn of War could get a remaster of its own. The ideas và systems holding this game together feel as subversive and exciting today as they probably did back in 2004. And even though the graphics aren’t great, it doesn’t take anything away from the thrill of Dawn of War’s bloody battles. It’s just a shame that a few technical issues can make returning lớn Tartarus a little annoying. Even so, it’s easy khổng lồ look past those moments when you’re wrapped up in the intensity of a skirmish or playing through the surprisingly good story campaign.
With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven"s mission is to lớn chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it"s colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn khổng lồ games khổng lồ protect them from the loneliness of the xuất hiện road, Steven tries lớn unearth PC gaming"s greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money khổng lồ spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb tải về of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 kiểm tra that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.
