Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Chaos Rising Hands-On - The New Campaign

Thanks to the Dawn of War series, real-time strategy games have begun to evolve past their roots of collecting resources, building structures, churning out an army, and eventually swarming opponents. The offense-minded series had a new chapter earlier this year with the full-on sequel, Dawn of War II, which introduced the Tyranids as a playable race, and the first stand-alone expansion for the sequel, Chaos Rising, will reintroduce the bane of the Emperor's existence, the Chaos Marines, as both a new villain in the campaign and a playable faction in multiplayer. (We're also told that a Chaos Marine hero will likely be added to a future edition of the recently released Last Stand cooperative mode.)

Fortunately for us, we recently had a chance to jump into Chaos Rising's campaign to rejoin Tarkus, Cyrus, Avitus, Thaddeus, and the rest of the Blood Ravens to continue fighting the good fight. (But please be advised that this story may contain minor plot spoilers.) Like in the original game, in the expansion, you'll play as the same squad of Blood Ravens, in this case, attempting to reclaim an ice planet that has just emerged from "the Warp" (the parallel universe inhabited by the corrupting forces of Chaos)--a planet that houses an ancient Blood Raven chapter once thought to be lost forever. We understand that about half the game will take place on this new icy planet, though there will still be numerous interstellar missions that will require you to jump from planet to planet.

Like in Dawn of War II, Chaos Rising's campaign will let you deploy the Blood Ravens to various sectors on beleaguered planets to thwart the machinations of evil aliens, such as the mysterious Eldar space elves, the terrifying Tyranids, and those darned, dirty Orks, though you soon find yourself at odds with the forces of corrupted Chaos Space Marines as well. And this time around, the campaign missions will be structured differently. The original Dawn of War II's campaign was built around having manageably short missions that involved fighting a few squadrons of enemies, picking up some loot, and eventually dueling a powerful "boss" enemy, and since you could finish many of those missions in 15 to 30 minutes, it was very friendly to players with tight schedules. However, some found that the mission structure got repetitive over time, so Chaos Rising's missions will, on average, be somewhat longer and will have very different objectives and pacing. While there will still be a post-mission score awarded to you based on your performance, and there will still be optional side missions that will reward you with additional experience and loot, not all missions will offer the same threats or objectives, and not all missions will end with a simple boss fight.

We'll tell you now that some of Chaos Rising's battles will get very intense and will be noticeably bigger than those of Dawn of War II, but fortunately, you'll have extra backup in the form of new Space Marine members who will join you, like Jonah, the Librarian unit, who is effectively the Space Marines' fragile wizard character. The Librarian seems to be at his best providing a combination of back-end allied support and long-distance artillery when equipped with the proper items. Like in Dawn of War II, your characters can all earn (or discover in the spoils of war) powerful weapons and artifacts, some of which grant extra abilities. The powered-up Librarian character we played as carried numerous high-end items that granted him the ability to heal a single ally, "buff" (strengthen) nearby allies, and trigger several powerful, spell-like abilities, such as firing a devastating lance of lightning that wreaks havoc on buildings and vehicles, or blasting an enemy with explosive fire that will also cause it to explode and detonate other nearby enemies in a chain reaction. Having taken this powerful unit for a spin ourselves, we can say that micromanagement skills will really make him a capable ally, since most of the Librarian's awesome powers are, of course, limited by both an energy meter and a "cooldown" delay after each use.

To add more variety to the game, in some missions, you'll also be able to command non-Marine units, such as powerful Destructor tanks specialized either as anti-infantry or anti-vehicle units. These extremely powerful allies generally move quite slowly (though they have a temporary speed boost ability that can also be used to flatten infantry), can take themselves offline to be repaired, and may also be vulnerable to critical hits delivered to their rear chassis. The experience of using these units against the forces of Chaos we encountered in our campaign missions seemed not unlike the tank missions of Relic's previous game, Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor, though the tank driving and ability use are a bit more streamlined and won't require quite as much micromanagement (since you'll also be in control of a squadron of powerful Space Marines who also have various special abilities).

The missions we played included several skirmishes against the forces of Chaos, who, as it turns out, are led by Chaos Lord Eliphas the Inheritor (the powerful Chaos general from the previous games). Eliphas commands a much bigger army now and apparently relishes the idea of locking blades with you once more. However, the forces of Chaos that power his fanatic forces will also have a subtle effect on your own actions in the campaign, since Chaos Rising will introduce a new "corruption meter," which effectively acts as an additional skill tree. In various missions, you'll be confronted with key decisions, such as how to bypass a massive security gate on a besieged Imperial homeworld--either by stopping to secure the gate controls and opening up the way normally or by forgetting your place as a Space Marine and simply opening fire to tear down the gate--which is itself a symbol of the Emperor's authority. These choices may shift the alignment of the Blood Ravens chapter away from being "pure in the eyes of the Emperor" to coming under the influence of Chaos' corruption. As your squad becomes more corrupt, each character's corruption meter will extend further to the right (just like your characters' skill trees) and will unlock new corruption-based powers, which will tend to grant temporary offensive bonuses at the cost of sacrificing health, armor, or the general safety of your units. Relic is remaining tight-lipped on the significance of the corruption meter and has simply said that having a corrupt chapter of Space Marines will have "story-related repercussions later on in the campaign."

Given that Chaos Rising adds in new campaign missions that are longer and more complex and, in some cases, seem more like traditional real-time strategy campaign missions, and given that the Blood Ravens gain access to new allies in the Librarian, tons of new war gear, and all-new corruption abilities, it seems that Dawn of War fans are in for a much-improved single-player experience that offers the achievement-focused structure of the campaign with more-traditional challenges. Oh, and Chaos is back too--and they seem very powerful and will probably be a force to be reckoned with in multiplayer. Chaos Rising looks like it will deliver more explosive gameplay and an even richer multiplayer experience to the Dawn of War universe. The game will ship next March.