Relicnews: the definitive source for all things Relic

Reminder folks, if you’ve not signed up already, Sign Up For The Next Phase Of The Beta.

Psssstttt Beta folks, go check out the threads titled “Suggestions to Devs” and “State of the Patch 1.3″ in the main discussion forum at Strategyplanet.com’s beta forums. That’s about as much detail as I can give without potentially violating any NDA type thing.

Viciojuegos, a spanish gaming site, has done a spanish language preview of Dawn of War.

El Single Player nos sitúa al mando de los Ángeles Sangrientos, con una trama por delante que desenmascarar de la cual todavía no se ha dicho nada. Por la información filtrada, no se basará en ninguno de los relatos escritos sobre Warhammer 40K, pero sí que tendrá guiños o guardará coincidencias con multitud de ellos. A lo largo de la campaña nos encontraremos con un buen número de razas, a saber, Orkos, Eldar, Marines Espaciales del Caos y Guardia Imperial. Tanto los 3 primeros mencionados como los Marines Espaciales, podrán ser manejados individualmente en el Multiplayer, y sin ningún tipo de restricción, pero en cambio La Guardia Imperial hará su aparición en la campaña como simple cameo. No obstante, un grupo de fans, tiene previsto la creación de un mod en un futuro próximo para que también puedan ser manejados. También han surgido rumores de que en la versión final del juego, dispondremos de una quinta raza a elegir, la cual estaría aún por determinar. Sea cierto o no, las 4 razas previstas y la “participación” de los Imperiales, es un número muy respetable y dejará más que satisfecho al jugador estratega.

Wow, just wow. Actually I have almost no idea what that says… maybe something about orks. That site does hae a cool apache error page. The sad apache cartoon guy looks so sad.

Thanks to peer for the heads up.

The Dawn of War previews just keep rolling in. This time Tom’s Hardware has taken a look at the game and given their impressions. As usual, here’s a little taste:

That same great zoom you may remember from Homeworld is back also, allowing you to look down on your men from high above or stand nearly eye to eye with them as they rain blows upon the enemy. Get in real close on robot units such as Ork Killer Kans to see the scraped paint and tarnished metal, or pause the game and hover around Occultists to see the veins in their forehead, tattoos on their faces, or individual stitches in their mouths.

Thanks to Mongoose for the heads up. You can discuss the article in this thread.

IGN has put together an article listing what they believe to be the twelve best games coming out in the next few months. Dawn of War is, of course, among those games and can be found on page 6 of the article. Here’s a little blurb:

Relic has no small experience when it comes to strategy titles. The Homeworld games are classics of the genre, and while Impossible Creatures may not have gained a huge audience, no one can deny the title’s creative audacity. Given this, we were delighted to hear Relic was giving the RTS treatment to the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

IGN has a comparison up between Dawn of War and Starcraft.

For all their similarities there are several things that seem to differentiate Dawn of War from StarCraft, many of which stem from the fact that Relic is making this a 3D game in 2004 with all of the advances and standards that define current RTSs. Beginning with the squad-based unit system where building a single “unit” spits out four little guys grouped together as seen in games like Rise of Nations. The leap we see in Dawn of War is the ability to upgrade a squad with additional units and leadership units and that all of this can be done within the squad itself, not a barracks. Furthermore, weapon upgrades for the individuals within the squad to make it a more specialized or versatile force make a huge difference.

Kinda interesting read! Although I don’t know if I agree with the bit that both games were inspired by the movie Aliens.

Thanks to Relicuniverse.com for the heads up.

There’s a Q&A with Jay Wilson up at Gamespy. Here’s a snip:

GameSpy: While you’re only including four Warhammer 40,000 races in the game, modding projects are already underway to install the Tau and the Tyranid races. How do you feel about these projects? Do you plan on supporting them in any way? Jay Wilson: Relic has always supported the mod community, and we know this is as important, maybe more important, for Dawn of War than it has been for any of our games. We admire the enthusiasm of the mod community and count on their support, just as we will support them with tools to mod our game. We recognize that the pioneering spirit of the mod community is part of what makes them such a strong fan base, and we obviously like that.

Inclluded with the interview are a bunch of new screenshots, which we preported on in the previous post (don’t ask me how that happened it just did). Overall an excellent read. Thanks to hybris for spotting the interview.

Gamespy’s got a video walkthrough of Dawn of War up.

Check it out here.

Thanks to Dukes on IRC for the heads up.

(I’m still in a queue to download).

Update: Also up at gamespy are a bunch of new screenshots which you can see here, and discuss here. Thanks to Shadow Wolf for spotting that one.

It’s come to my attention that the Goldenjoystick award voting is underway. The latest Relic game, Warhammer 40,000:Dawn of War is up in a few categories.

Go to the Voting Page and check out the following three categories.

Best PC Game
Best Online Game
Ultimate Game of the Year

THQ UK is also up for Publisher of the year.

Discuss!

IGN has slapped up a Space Marines faction preview written up by some of the Relic developers (including Chris Degnan, Jay Wilson, Andy Lang, Dominic Mathieu and Roland Longpre). Here’s a snip:

Probably the crowning glory of our development successes has been the Attribute Editor tool. Through the Attribute Editor, we were able to put wide-ranging powers in the hands of the designers, including the ability to create new units, tweak unit characteristics, modify the strengths and weaknesses of weapons versus various targets, and create entire new races. Not only did this help to streamline our development and remove programmers as a bottleneck to the designers’ progress, but these tools will provide the same creative freedom to our mod community when we release them!

Included with the preview are a set of new renders, concept art and screenshots which you can check out here.

If you happened to miss the Ork faction preview that we reported on a while ago, be sure to check it out too.

While at IGN don’t forget to add DOW to your wishlist if you haven’t already.