Dawn of War 2!!!

Dawn of war 2 screenshots,

http://www.dawnofwar2.com/media/screenshots/high_resolution/Assault_jump.jpg

http://www.dawnofwar2.com/media/screenshots/high_resolution/Orbital.jpg

http://www.dawnofwar2.com/media/screenshots/high_resolution/Assault_Battle.jpg

Dawn of war 2 scans,

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/4448/dowfe2.jpg

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/7184/dow2kh8.jpg

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/8660/dow3qr0.jpg

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/4692/dow4zi1.jpg

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/8397/dow5yn9.jpg

Dawn of war 2 will be one of the biggest PC games of 2009, and I have some exclusive details just for you guys. There are just some details, you will get a lot more soon. :)

Anyway, the intel (gathered from the preview and an interview with Producer Mark Noseworthy):

- 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", 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 2005.
- Release in early 2009 or later.

It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.. can't wait to see COH 2 though.. although hopefully they'll have another expansion or two for COH before it's sequel.

I didn't really get into DOW, maybe i should go back and give it another go sometime before the sequel comes out. I liked the demo, but when i tried it at a netcafe i just couldn't get into it.

This is in a dutch magazine, I found this in Gamereplys.org website. :)gogators4life

Gamereplays.org is a forum :P Doesn't mean everything is accurrate. Without an official statement it's only speculation since it can't be verified. Good info.. just dont want to get everyones hopes up.

First thing I did was ctrl f and type tyr. I got worried and quickly read the whole thing. I bet they save the Tyranids for last, the bastards.

Sucks on the release date, though. Still, Dawn of War 2 vs StarCraft 2? Should be a good battle.

What's wrong with Tyranids. :)gogators4life

Nothing, except that they are not yet announced.

Awesome. I actually feel confident your info is probably correct.

I like the little details they're talking about implementing (like the ork saying something different depending on what the Force Commander is wielding). It's little things like that, I think, that go the extra mile and really make the combat in Dawn of War just a blast to watch. It's why I love just turtling on a single skirmish map for hours, letting enemies come to my meat grinder, so I can watch and hear all the great effects and animations and explosions and voiceovers. Things like the sync kill animations, for example, are little touches put into the games that just get me wrapped up in the experience and make it a lot of fun, so I'm glad to see that part of their focus is on expanding on that aspect in the next installment.

- 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.

gogators4life

If this refers to limiting how many units/squads you can have selected at any time (like Starcraft and Warcraft 3 limiting you to 12), I'd actually prefer against this, but six squads isn't too bad, so I'm sure I could live with it easily.

Sucks on the release date, though. Still, Dawn of War 2 vs StarCraft 2? Should be a good battle.

mfsa

I was actually surprised by how soon the date was. I was thinking late '09 at the soonest. Early '09 or later sounds great.

I have absolutely all confidence that DoW2 will whip the **** out of SC2 for me (though I'm sure the latter will be more popular). DoW is my favorite RTS franchise, while SC is one of my least favorite RTS games of all (not to say I don't like it; I do, just not a lot). I'm much more anticipant to see how DoW2 stacks up against its predecessor.

[QUOTE="mfsa"]

Sucks on the release date, though. Still, Dawn of War 2 vs StarCraft 2? Should be a good battle.

JP_Russell

I was actually surprised by how soon the date was. I was thinking late '09 at the soonest. Early '09 or later sounds great.

I had assumed that DoW 2 would use the CoH engine, and that with the engine built and with the original DoW as an army structure/balance model, development on DoW 2 would be pretty fast. That, and I had assumed that the 2007 teaser at the end of Dark Crusade was about DoW 2, so I was thinking announcement in '07, release in '08. Still - all I want is for it to be a great game, and if they need until 2009 or 2012 to make it great, they have my blessing.

I have absolutely all confidence that DoW2 will whip the **** out of SC2 for me (though I'm sure the latter will be more popular). DoW is my favorite RTS franchise, while SC is one of my least favorite RTS games of all (not to say I don't like it; I do, just not a lot). I'm much more anticipant to see how DoW2 stacks up against its predecessor.

JP_Russell

Totally. I think Relic is a much, much better developer than Blizzard (as far as RTS games go) and I think the RTS genre as a whole is the fastest moving, fastest evolving genre out there - and Relic is the real innovator right now, while Blizzard literally looks like it's trying to just remake a ten year old game. I don't think the genre needs that at all, while I'm sure that Relic will build on the CoH formula in the same way that CoH built on the DoW formula.

The only reason I want SCII is for the editor. SC shipped with a very powerful, very easy to use campaign editor - I spent more time making and playing my own missions than I did playing the full game. For that reason alone I am definitely getting SCII because, unless DoW2 ships with a similarly easy to use editor, it will let me have fun in a way that DoW2 never will. And if DoW2 doesn't have Tyranids (that would be the biggest mistake Relic ever made), then I'm looking forward to SCII for the Zerg.

You're definitely right about SCII being more popular. I can see it selling 3-5m units worldwide in the first year, while DoW2 might manage 1-3m... or something like that.

Like I said, those descriptions are from Dutch gaming magazine, some people bought them, so you might see the scans pretty soon.

The magazine came with some pics.

Some guy from Relic forum describing these pics,

gogators4life

Can you ask him to take photos or scans of the pictures? I'm sure they'll be online in a matter of hours anyway, but I CANNOT WAIT A MATTER OF HOURS!!

This is some of the best news I've heard in a long time. DoW is, in my opinion, one of the best franchises out there. I'm also glad that it seems to be returning to the series' roots, since some of the departures (*cough*soulstorm*cough*) didn't work out so well. All of the info so far indicates to me that this game will earn an immediate spot on my shelf.

A note on the Tyranids: as I recall, the reason Relic didn't put them in the first series is that they wanted the game not to look like a Starcraft rip-off. Given all of the SC2 hype flying around, I think it's pretty reasonable that Relic would want to avoid making a game that looks like a SC2 clone. I'll be very happy if the Tyranids are included, but I won't be all "WTF WERE R TEH TYRANIDS?!!~1"

A note on the Tyranids: as I recall, the reason Relic didn't put them in the first series is that they wanted the game not to look like a Starcraft rip-off. Given all of the SC2 hype flying around, I think it's pretty reasonable that Relic would want to avoid making a game that looks like a SC2 clone. I'll be very happy if the Tyranids are included, but I won't be all "WTF WERE R TEH TYRANIDS?!!~1"

Mad_Wombat_17

While that may be true (and probably is), Relic has stated numerous times that the (official) reason Tyranids never made it into DoW was because they felt the Dawn of War engine couldn't do them justice, and their wording always hinted that Dawn of War 2 would be coming, and that it would feature Tyranids.

[QUOTE="Mad_Wombat_17"]

A note on the Tyranids: as I recall, the reason Relic didn't put them in the first series is that they wanted the game not to look like a Starcraft rip-off. Given all of the SC2 hype flying around, I think it's pretty reasonable that Relic would want to avoid making a game that looks like a SC2 clone. I'll be very happy if the Tyranids are included, but I won't be all "WTF WERE R TEH TYRANIDS?!!~1"

mfsa

While that may be true (and probably is), Relic has stated numerous times that the (official) reason Tyranids never made it into DoW was because they felt the Dawn of War engine couldn't do them justice

To expand on what they meant, they were referring to the general nature of Tyranids in combat. They're a seething tide of monsters that just blunders through the frontlines once they reach them, and the DoW engine just has too many pathing problems and generic combat mechanics (generic referring to how all units in the game converge in melee in the same way; Tyranids don't run up to an opponent and start a duel-like exchange of blows, they charge in and attempt to deliver extremely fast, fatal blows, dancing around and in and out of physical contact), not to mention the pop cap system used doesn't work quite as well for them as for the other races. The Tyranid mod ain't bad (its still unfinished state notwithstanding), but it still shows perfectly how the Tyranid character is limited and disappointing when depicted under the DoW engine.

Dawn of war 2 confirmed by IGN,

http://pc.ign.com/articles/862/862755p1.html

Dawn of war 2 confirmed by IGN,

http://pc.ign.com/articles/862/862755p1.html

gogators4life

Well, so much for PC Gamer's upcoming "secret exclusive." :P

PC gamer will have way more info(I think).gogators4life

Yeah, but it still couldn't be called an outright exclusive now, and definitely not secret.

This is terrible news. So much for Homeworld 3........I'm soo dissappointed. I get the feeling there will be no HW 3

This is terrible news. So much for Homeworld 3........I'm soo dissappointed. I get the feeling there will be no HW 3

1q3er5

First off, on the subject of the previously ongoing debate about whether it would be DoW or Homeworld that would be next to have another installment, I would like to say in as formal a manner as possible: Eat it, suckas!! I's right, you's wrong! Vic-toh-reeee, *****es!! :P

Now that I have that out of my system, THQ (parent company of Relic) bought up the rights to the Homeworld franchise not too long ago. I would surmise that this was in fact done not just for kicks but instead for the intent to develop another game under the Homeworld franchise in the near future. So, fear not, Homeworld 3 is coming, we just have to wait a little longer.

This is terrible news. So much for Homeworld 3........I'm soo dissappointed. I get the feeling there will be no HW 3

1q3er5

Go play Sins of a Solar empire. It's a superior game anyways.

Dawn of war 2 scans,

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/4448/dowfe2.jpg

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/7184/dow2kh8.jpg

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/8660/dow3qr0.jpg

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/4692/dow4zi1.jpg

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/8397/dow5yn9.jpg

^^^^^^ *smirk* Yeah, I could easily see DoW2 having as big a following as SC2. It's a well-thought-of game around these boards, I know. I wouldn't be surprised to see it do well. You never really know till it happens. I thought UT3 would outdo Crysis just because of the factor of the established community for UT games. Clearly, it didn't go down that way. It's entirely possible that SC2 will only do well in East Asia or something, the way UT3 mostly seems to be attracting Europeans (somewhat of an inference on my part). I have yet to play DoW myself, so I can't really comment. I buy the expansions sometimes anyway, when I see them for $12.99 on clearance or something, like one day I'm actually going to tear through all that content. Still, it could easily outstrip SC2 except in Korea.A lot of people are NOT impressed with the new SC. Of course, by that logic, they could both be killed by some new RTS the Xmas, if people are really looking for something new. I guess it doesn't matter to us though. (JP and me) We pretty much know what we are plunking our coin down on.Srinivassa

Joke post? or clueless?

[QUOTE="Srinivassa"]^^^^^^ *smirk* Yeah, I could easily see DoW2 having as big a following as SC2. It's a well-thought-of game around these boards, I know. I wouldn't be surprised to see it do well. You never really know till it happens. I thought UT3 would outdo Crysis just because of the factor of the established community for UT games. Clearly, it didn't go down that way. It's entirely possible that SC2 will only do well in East Asia or something, the way UT3 mostly seems to be attracting Europeans (somewhat of an inference on my part). I have yet to play DoW myself, so I can't really comment. I buy the expansions sometimes anyway, when I see them for $12.99 on clearance or something, like one day I'm actually going to tear through all that content. Still, it could easily outstrip SC2 except in Korea.A lot of people are NOT impressed with the new SC. Of course, by that logic, they could both be killed by some new RTS the Xmas, if people are really looking for something new. I guess it doesn't matter to us though. (JP and me) We pretty much know what we are plunking our coin down on.SKaREO

Joke post? or clueless?

Dawn of war 2 scans,

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/4448/dowfe2.jpg

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/7184/dow2kh8.jpg

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/8660/dow3qr0.jpg

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/4692/dow4zi1.jpg

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/8397/dow5yn9.jpg

gogators4life

Man, oh, man, that looks beautiful. One thing's for sure, I'm upgrading my system before DoW2 comes out.

I am sure if you can play Crysis on high, you can play this on high(my guess).

Also, should Tyranids have creep(similar to the creep for Zerg), the creep could destory terrian. :)

I am sure if you can play Crysis on high, you can play this on high(my guess).

Also, should Tyranids have creep(similar to the creep for Zerg), the creep could destory terrian. :)

gogators4life

1. I can't play Crysis on high, I play it on almost all medium with an average resolution (which still looks gorgeous). But this is a 40K game; I want to see it in as much glory as possible. I know it may sound weird that I would upgrade my rig for an RTS over an FPS, but it's not the genre, it's the universe. Seeing those scans makes me giddy, I've just got to play the game looking that beautiful. It'll officially be the most graphically advanced game to showcase the 40K universe, which I love dearly, so I want to have my imagination of it brought to life in as real and beautiful visuals as the game can manage.

2. No. Tyranids don't have any "creep," so they shouldn't be depicted as having it. Their methods corrupt the entire world's ecosystem almost at once, they don't take control of land little bits at a time.

So how do you think the Tyranids will play out? gogators4life

I've no idea, but not like the Zerg. I think it'd be kind of cool, though, if they made it so every unit appeared by a pod dropping down by their production building or something (as opposed to them just popping up out of thin air by it). In the fluff, Tyranids all come from the hiveships (or more specifically, the Queen inside each hiveship), they're never made on the planet surface, so it'd be neat if Relic stuck to the fluff in that respect.

[QUOTE="Srinivassa"]^^^^^^ *smirk* Yeah, I could easily see DoW2 having as big a following as SC2. It's a well-thought-of game around these boards, I know. I wouldn't be surprised to see it do well. You never really know till it happens. I thought UT3 would outdo Crysis just because of the factor of the established community for UT games. Clearly, it didn't go down that way. It's entirely possible that SC2 will only do well in East Asia or something, the way UT3 mostly seems to be attracting Europeans (somewhat of an inference on my part). I have yet to play DoW myself, so I can't really comment. I buy the expansions sometimes anyway, when I see them for $12.99 on clearance or something, like one day I'm actually going to tear through all that content. Still, it could easily outstrip SC2 except in Korea.A lot of people are NOT impressed with the new SC. Of course, by that logic, they could both be killed by some new RTS the Xmas, if people are really looking for something new. I guess it doesn't matter to us though. (JP and me) We pretty much know what we are plunking our coin down on.SKaREO

Joke post? or clueless?

Have you actually played COH? The havok engine is superior to anything out there for RTS's. I have seen so many screenshots of SC2 and it just looks goofy. It looks just like it did umpteen years ago. People grow up and move on. RTS's have come so far since SC, and it doesn't really look like a huge departure from the original. With that in mind if that's your thing then more power to you. But real strategy will be in DOW 2. Not the mindless rush associated with SC. Starcraft is nine years old. Who cares it's history. Everyone talks like Blizzard is some big deal because of World of Warcraft. That's all they have going for them. When was the last non-mmo game released by them? 2002. And they couldn't seem to get Ghost out of the gate. So why all the hype? Yes Diablo was fun in 1996. Warcraft was fun in 1994. It's 2008 people.

Dawn of war 2 will get better reviews than Starcraft 2.

Starcraft 2 will sell more than Dawn of war 2.

I like JP's idea of Tyranids. :)

[QUOTE="SKaREO"]

[QUOTE="Srinivassa"]^^^^^^ *smirk* Yeah, I could easily see DoW2 having as big a following as SC2. It's a well-thought-of game around these boards, I know. I wouldn't be surprised to see it do well. You never really know till it happens. I thought UT3 would outdo Crysis just because of the factor of the established community for UT games. Clearly, it didn't go down that way. It's entirely possible that SC2 will only do well in East Asia or something, the way UT3 mostly seems to be attracting Europeans (somewhat of an inference on my part). I have yet to play DoW myself, so I can't really comment. I buy the expansions sometimes anyway, when I see them for $12.99 on clearance or something, like one day I'm actually going to tear through all that content. Still, it could easily outstrip SC2 except in Korea.A lot of people are NOT impressed with the new SC. Of course, by that logic, they could both be killed by some new RTS the Xmas, if people are really looking for something new. I guess it doesn't matter to us though. (JP and me) We pretty much know what we are plunking our coin down on.Cabal23

Joke post? or clueless?

Have you actually played COH? The havok engine is superior to anything out there for RTS's. I have seen so many screenshots of SC2 and it just looks goofy. It looks just like it did umpteen years ago. People grow up and move on. RTS's have come so far since SC, and it doesn't really look like a huge departure from the original. With that in mind if that's your thing then more power to you. But real strategy will be in DOW 2. Not the mindless rush associated with SC. Starcraft is nine years old. Who cares it's history. Everyone talks like Blizzard is some big deal because of World of Warcraft. That's all they have going for them. When was the last non-mmo game released by them? 2002. And they couldn't seem to get Ghost out of the gate. So why all the hype? Yes Diablo was fun in 1996. Warcraft was fun in 1994. It's 2008 people.

Company of Heroes is just a dumbed down Close Combat with lame resource elements thrown in. Its amazing how people call CoH 'new' and 'innovative' when its just a stripped down wargame squeezed into an RTS template. Anyways what's your comment on 'real strategy' there are tons of tactics used in StarCraft, just look at the tournaments. Which of these tactics do you consider 'real tactics'?

-Fast tech to Quad

-Crocodile Base Rush

-Blob Tactics

-Arty spam

-StuG spam

-Panzershrecked Grenadiers/Medic Bunker spam

-Ranger spam

-Panzer Elite Scout Car spam

-Pioneer spam (ughhh)

-Rifleman spam

Dawn of war 2 will get better reviews than Starcraft 2.

Starcraft 2 will sell more than Dawn of war 2.

I like JP's idea of Tyranids. :)

gogators4life

Just like DoW got better reviews than SC?

But anyways;

StarCraft 2 will be better balanced and lack bugs and glitches.

Dawn of War 2 is going to be an online embarrassment like most Relic games;

-It's going to have embarrassing game breaking glitches like the 5% damage/invincibility bug and its going to take Relic ages to fix them.

-Its going to have crappy servers like Relic Online

-Its going to have poor inner-fraction balance where nearly half the units will not be much use.

-Its going to rail road you into using certain tactics do to faction balance, like Panzer Elite going Luftwaffe to get paratroopers and Americans going Infantry in order to get Rangers every single game when the two sides play.

-Its going to have poor intra-faction balance with 100mb+ balance patches being released every month.