Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Winter Assault Designer Diary #2 - Single-Player, Storytelling, and Order vs. Disorder

The face of real-time strategy is changing, thanks to games like last year's excellent Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. Rather than force you to send peasants to chop wood until you could build up your base and then churn out an army, the fast-paced strategy game focused on getting you to explore your surroundings and aggressively capture territory before you crushed your enemies. And now, publisher THQ and developer Relic Entertainment are hard at work on the expansion pack, Winter Assault, which will offer an all-new playable side, as well as an all-new single-player campaign. Lead designer Andrew Chambers explains what you can expect from the expansion.

Your Very Own Winter Assault

By Andrew Chambers
Lead Designer, Relic Entertainment

I love stories. I love games with stories. Even more, I love games that have stories, and amazing gameplay that ties in with that story. I don't call these kinds of artfully crafted games "single-player campaigns," I call them "singular experiences." These are the kinds of games that make you stare at the loading screen with bated breath, listening to the music, reading the text, waiting impatiently to see, hear, and experience the next step in the experience. This is what single-player campaigns should be, in all games. I remember many nights spent playing games when I was younger that were like this. The task now falls to us to give you that same experience when you sit down with Dawn of War: Winter Assault and load up that first mission. We hope you do so with anticipation. In fact, we hope you load the second mission with even more.

Many months ago when we began to develop the key features for Dawn of War: Winter Assault, we took stock of how the original had been received. One of the commonly repeated comments we saw related to the single-player campaign. People thought it was too short, too repetitive, and that it lacked choice. People certainly were enjoying themselves, but we took these comments to heart, and decided that one of the key focuses for Winter Assault would be to address these comments. We wanted the player to have more choice when playing the single-player campaign--every mission should be unique, and we needed to find a way to make it longer, even though we were just an expansion. As you can see, we don't like to make it easy for ourselves!

So how are we delivering these things in Winter Assault? How are we ensuring that you, the player, find the campaign in Winter Assault to be a "singular experience?"

To begin with, we are giving you more choice. No longer is your experience limited to a sole campaign. You get to choose between the forces of order and disorder right from the start. Choose order, and you will play through a campaign told from the perspective of the Imperial Guard and the eldar. Choose disorder, and you see how the story is told from the chaos and ork perspective. Not only do you choose at this level, but you also get to choose how the campaign ends. In the second to last mission, you will choose, through your actions and successes during the mission, which race will go on to the final mission and win the campaign. You get to choose.

Also, every mission is a unique gameplay experience, with different objectives, new styles of gameplay, some of which have never been seen in an RTS before. One of the criticisms of the single-player game in Dawn of War was the repetitive nature of the missions. No more. Just one example of how we are achieving this comes from the very first mission of the disorder campaign. Playing as the orks, your goal will be to "gather the clans." Littered across the map are hundreds of orks all warring under their own banners. If you can destroy those banners, they will have no choice but to follow you! In this way, we actually redesigned the way that a player can gain access to higher levels of the tech tree. As you gain more orks, you'll gain access to higher-level technology. Plus, more orks equals more fun!

Another feature we are focused on is providing the player with a more-cinematic experience. Dawn of War is graphically the best RTS game available right now, and we wanted to leverage that strength. All of the in-mission cinematics have been storyboarded this time around to ensure we have a higher quality across the board. Also, we are taking advantage of a bit of a lost opportunity by including the incredible animations front and center in many of our cinematics.

One of the largest components of a single-player campaign is the story. The story sets the scene; it gives you motivation for moving forward; it provides context for why you are doing what you are doing. Oh, and it's probably one of the hardest things to get right in a single-player campaign. Stories for games are best served when they have a clear motivation. One of Relic's earlier titles, Homeworld, is a fantastic example of this rule. In Homeworld, the goal was always clear: "get home!" By establishing such a clear goal, players never had any question about where they were going next, why they needed to destroy that enemy ship, or why they needed those extra resources.

In Winter Assault, we wanted to mimic this style of storytelling. Our goals for the campaign structure were going to be more complicated than the standard linear template, so simplicity was important. Hence we decided to crash a titan. We decided that the goal for the races in Winter Assault would be to capture a titan, an immense war machine, standing some 10 stories tall and with the firepower to level entire cities. With this clear goal established, the rest of the story pretty much wrote itself.

Another huge component of any successful single-player campaign is the audio: the voice acting, the music, and the ambient sound effects. It's astounding to experience a single-player mission as it progresses from just an audio perspective. Initially, it is just silence, and pretty bland. Then, the dialogue goes in, and suddenly all of the objectives you were accomplishing before are given new meaning as compelling characters instill you with direction. Finally, music is integrated.

Something we learned with Winter Assault is just how important music is to the player experience. Most of the time, players won't even notice good music. They won't care about average music, but they will definitely care about bad music. We learned this from our music composer, Inon Zur, who has, from the start, pushed a fairly unique method of music composition and delivery, and worked very closely with us to integrate it into our game. Gone are the days of listening to a repetitive, looped music list as you play through a mission. If you pay attention when playing Winter Assault, you will discover that music accompanies your events, providing you with rewards, encouragement, and a companion as you progress. It's really something to hear.

Of course, right now we are wrapping up the final details: getting the last few cinematics in, integrating the final music deliveries, tweaking, polishing, bug fixing. I've personally played through both campaigns numerous times, but I still enjoy coming in to work in the morning and starting a campaign fresh. It seems that whenever I play I find something new about the game, a new way to beat that objective, or a better way to destroy that tank ambush. I've had many a singular experience whilst playing these missions, and I'm sure you will too.