Dawn of War III
"In darkness, I shall be light
In times of doubt, I shall keep faith
In throes of rage, I shall hone my craft
In vengeance, I shall have no mercy
In the midst of battle, I shall have no fear
In the face of death, I shall have no remorse"
- The voice in the trailer.
Announced on 3rd of May 2016, Relic Entertainment (under Sega's wing) finally showed that they were actually doing it. Dawn of War III is the third entry in the popular Dawn of War series.
Even though most of us have been waiting for this game for quite a long time, beware of the fact that because there are only 3 races available from the start, our wallets may become alarmingly thinner if we would want to experience the full glory of the W40k universe this game could offer us. It has been done before with the expansion packs in DoW 1 and it can be done again, although not to include Chaos as one of the starting races has got to be one of the biggest heresies so far. The Imperial Guard will be featured, but as a NPC race and will appear in a couple of missions as allies to the Space Marines and enemies to the other races. Also, several clues hint on the Necrons being a super secret surprise faction.
My point is: take great care and have faith in your respective God so that your money won't be thrown away needlessly before knowing what you are buying. Or jus' live tha freebootaz life afta dem ruskie boyz crack it shortly afta release, yar-har-har-har!
The game is set for an April 27 2017 release.
Plot
Coming back with a new look and much closer to the first game while having elements from the second, the third installment will see the return of some of the more popular characters. Among them Gabriel Angelos, Farseer Macha and Warboss Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter will battle for the planet of Acheron for a powerful weapon known as the Spear of Khaine. Whilst the Eldar and Orks seek to obtain it for its tremendous power, Gabriel seeks to prevent anyone from using it, as it apparently reeks of deceit.
Returning Characters
Imperials (Blood Ravens)
- Chapter Master Gabriel Angelos: Returning with a ornate and badass looking set of Terminator Armor. Would be 100% badass if it weren't for the fact that he was capable of inexplicably jumping several feet off the ground in said Terminator Armor (And the fact that he's no longer voiced by Paul Dobson *sob*) ! Battling with the other two factions to prevent them from obtaining the Spear of Khaine, as he suspects it may be corrupted. Some art has him standing at Primarch-grade height.
- Chief Librarian Jonah Orion: Promoted to Chief Librarian after surviving the battle against the chaos corrupted Chapter Master Azariah Kyras. Still black, now sports a goatee and wearing fancy new armor.
- Chaplain Apollo Diomedes:' Returning as a Chaplain in terminator armor (and just as capable of inexplicably jumping in the air in said armor like Angelos). Must have felt so ashamed about serving a chaos tainted traitor so much that he couldn't bear the mantle of First Company Captain anymore. So now he's a Chaplain, sniffing out taint and making heretics...Repent.
Eldar (Biel-Tan)
- Farseer Macha: Returning for the first time since the original Dawn of War, and looking exactly as she's been depicted in /tg/ art for years. Ostensibly working for Lord Kyre to get the Spear of Khaine for him, but appears to be suspicious of his real motives for doing so.
Eldar (Ulthwe)
- Ronahn: Also reappearing as the leader of a Ranger detachment, and only marginally less whiny than he was before. At some point, he leads Gorgutz and his horde to the entrance of a vault, fully aware that it is guarded by Eldar under the command of Lord Kyre and tricks both sides into fighting each other.
- Taldeer: Apparently Taldeer's soul stone ended up being salvaged during Retribution, as she reappears as a Wraithseer (mistakenly referred to as a Wraithknight). One of her prophecies as recounted in the trailers seems to refer to the impending conflict over the Spear of Khaine.
Orks (Bad Moons)
- Warboss Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter: Returning during his absence after Soulstorm, Gorgutz is back with a bigger and badder power klaw (with retractable chain, no less) and now leading the Bad Moons for some reason. Two possible reasons are:
- After getting off of Kaurava system, he somehow met with a Bad Moons WAAAGH! and took it over
- Relic just didn't want two red colored factions fighting each other.
Either way, he's racing against the other factions for the pointy-stick. At some point gets tricked by Ronahn into fighting a heavily defended Eldar base defending the vaults entrance (Ronahn "forgot" to mention that part, apparently), which somewhat makes Gorgutz a dumbass for actually trusting dem sneaky knife ears.
New Characters
Imperials (Blood Ravens)
- Captain Balthazar:
Imperials (Others)
- Lady Rebek Solaria: Head of House Varlock of Cyprus Ultima and pilot of the Imperial Knight, Drakaina. Drakaina is equipped with two avenger cannons that'll deal more damage when heated up. Becomes BFF's with Angelos after he saves Varlock Keep from Orks (against Inquisitor Holt's orders).
- Inquisitor Damien Holt: An Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos and seeks the wandering world, Acheron, for the Spear of Khaine. No relation to Commissar Holt.
- Deathwatch Killteam Ironmaw: They compose of a Dark Angel, a Blood Angel, a Crimson Fist, a Smurf and led by one of everyone's favourite space vikings.
Eldar (Biel-Tan)
- Lord Kyre: Leader of the Biel-Tan warhost and seeks to obtain the Spear of Khaine.
- Jain Zar: Phoenix Lord (Lady?) of the Howling Banshees and the first of the Phoenix Lords to be featured in a video game adaptation (Granted, she's also in Eternal Crusade, but has yet to fully appear in that game).
Orks (Bad Moons)
- Wazzmakka:
- Zappnoggin: A Weirdboy who sounds surprisingly sane-ish for an ork whose head can explode at any time.
Gameplay
In multiplayer players will be able to choose their choice of elite units, heroes and super-units along with doctrines.
Relic has confirmed the only multiplayer mode at the beginning will be on DOTA 2-like maps centered on breaking your opponent's power core. To elaborate further, the game mode will have players destroy enemy shields, then turrets guarding their bases before finally destroying the enemy power core. No, we are not kidding. Naturally, this decision has led to a lot of negative reception from the player-base. Perhaps knowing they are playing a Russian roulette Relic has offered an open beta so people can try it (likely to be released late April)
Differences and New Things
The game is seen to be closer to the first one while retaining certain elements from the second, but also adding new game mechanisms. Relic's aim was to make their latest game the most accessible (nobody knows how accessible it will be, but hoping it won't turn out the same way as a certain game that is slowly dying, yet it is said that battles will simply be easier to read via having the attacks clear enough to see where they are hitting).
Another change is the new cast of voice actors (whom according to the developers comprise of VA's from their previous title Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine). This has been met with some amount of rage from fans, most notably those who wish for the return of Paul Dobson as Angelos.
Base building and large scale battles make a return and there will only be Space Marines, Eldar and Orks available at start. Armies are now divided into line troops and elites. The first will be trying to fight and survive, while the latter are more powerful units that you can level up to become even more powerful. In both campaign and multiplayer, players will collect said elites and level them up to become even more efficient. Among them there will even be really powerful units that are showing up for the first time in the series (such as Imperial Knights, Wraithknights, and Gorkanauts). Some of these things may be controversial since Relic took some elements from ASSFAGGOT games (also known as MOBA:s, meaning that before you deploy in multi, you choose your commander and elites as counters and what will be great at breaking counters), yet so far Relic did not fail for now, thus it's way too early to judge (inasmuch as DoW3's existence was only just confirmed). At the very least, the presence of troop units to back up the character squads could mean that the rest of the Blood Ravens 4th Company might actually be getting off their asses and doing something this time around.
A thing to wary of is the campaign itself, since the homepage mentions having one linear campaign switching from controlling the Blood Ravens, the Eldar or Orks, so while the gameplay may be closer to Dawn of War I, the campaign itself will be closer to Vanilla Dawn of war II.
However the 12 minute exclusive gameplay has already drawn quite a lot of ire. With many complaining on the way it looks (Being cartoonish as shit), with rumors that the team developing DoW 3 is trying to piggyback Starcraft of all games to the animation lacking the weight and grit of the previous Dawn of War games. Special mentions goes to the fighting style animations of old Gabe whose sudden usage of backflips, frontflips and jumping like a 5 ton ballerina on crack despite wearing terminator armor has drawn accusations that one of the lead creators of this game might be a small, black leprechaun with a fetish of Multilasers and backflipping Terminators. Hell, the goddamn Lascannons don't fire a quick, charged, devastating single shot but instead its a laser weapon that fires rapidly, raising its rate of fire the longer it keeps firing. These suspicions are further reinforced by the fact that said bastard is the one that's writing the Blood Ravens book for the game. Also Taldeer is back as a Wraithknight of Ulthwe but for reasons unknown, is working with Biel-Tan alongside her brother Ronahn.
Later interviews and bits of information released have done little to ease the ire. Including the lead director confirming that sync-kills have been removed, Assault Marines being considered "light armor" units, the dynamic movement system introduced in II being removed, and fall back mechanics are also gone. At this point from a community standpoint, you're either absolutely behind these changes, or are watching something your were previously looking forward to turn into an absolute shitshow; with very little middle ground to be had apparently. And it really doesn't help that their methods of explaining away some of the lore breaking shit seems to come directly from our good old friend. Notably they try to explain the backflipping Terminator armor, by saying that his hammer has a shard of an Avatar in it. Coincidentally, that happened to be one of the Irish leper's ideas as well. Draw your own conclusions.
Relic managed to show in the BETA version of the game something interesting that enriches a player's experience. Namely Doctrines. Similar to the Doctrines from Relic's other title, namely Company of Heroes 2, the ones in Dawn of War III are at the same time something much more. First of, unlike in Company of Heroes 2, you may take up to three Doctrines and each is connected to specific Commanders and Elite Units. Secondly, the Doctrines do not give bullshit like +4% to ranged damage, but either unlock abilities for specific units or upgrade the existing abilities of others (like upgrading the Dreadnoughts to gain charge attacks and shields after executing slam attacks, giving Dire Avengers Holo-Fields, or giving Deffkoptas Buzzsaws).
Here are the game sales stats.