Relicnews: the definitive source for all things Relic

The whole RelicNews.com staff would like to wish you and your loved ones happy holidays. We wish you peace and happiness and are looking forward to reporting exciting video game news for you in 2006!

So now is come our joyful feast,
Let every man be jolly;
Each room with ivy leaves is dressed,
And every post with holly.
Though some churls at our mirth repine,
Round your foreheads garlands twine,
Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,
And let us all be merry.

–George Wither

Relicnews is proud to present the first issue of Chronica Modificatus. Written by Finaldeath, this editorial presents news, updates and interviews from the modding community for Dawn of War.

This issue also includes an interview with Ruosteinen about his Capture the Flag modification for Dawn of War.
You can discuss this editorial here.

Our colleagues at DoW.de¹ recently posted an interview with Jonathan Dowdeswell, producer for Dawn of War at Relic. Jonathan talks about balance, patches and hints at the future of Dawn of War. He also mentioned community projects:

We’re getting better at it, but we still find that developing patches that 1) satisfy all the balance demands of every player of every race, and 2) work for every single permutation of DOW and WA install (all languages, people at any patch level currently, people on WinXP vs. other OS’s, people on…..??? crazy combos), is very difficult.
I’ve been in contact with Thudmeister (sp?) about their work too actually. Yes, they shame us. :-)

Read the full interview here. You can discuss this on the forums. Thanks to f4lx for linking us.

¹ Site is in German.

After receiving the “Best Expansion of 2005″ award from IGN, Winter Assault’s last mission also got Gamespy’s “Level of the Year” award.

This final mission is brilliant in a number of ways. First, it’s a defensive mission that forces the player to rally around static points, which provides an exciting challenge in a game that usually focuses on movement and aggression. Second, this challenge quadruples once the player realizes that they’ll also have to adjust their tactics as they switch from race to race. It’s a little easier as the Imperial Guard, a race built more for defense than the other Warhammer 40,000 races, but to fight a defensive war as the stick-and-move Eldar, a race that tends to be a pushover in any kind of a stand-up battle, can be an incredibly hard. Kudos to Relic Entertainment, who managed to turn the final mission of Winter Assault’s single-player campaign into a uniquely fun and fresh strategic challenge.

Read the full article here.

Congratulations Mokona and Deggy¹. Your mission rocks.

¹ I have also been informed that Mok and Deggy did 2 missions each, while the other designers gave important feedback. Congratulations to you too. Mokona will you stop hitting me now?

Winter Assault was awarded the title “Best Expansion” in IGN’s The Best of 2005.

Here’s what they had to say:

Why It Rocked: The Warhammer universe has been a relatively underutilized source of material to build PC games over the year. Before last year’s RTS Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War there had been maybe one or two titles even worth talking about. Thankfully Dawn of War was good enough to really live up to the franchise and provide the kind of experience we had all hoped for. Developer Relic made sure to build on that and did so with style and polish in the Winter Assault expansion this year. Not only did it offer up a new story in the wide universe, but also added in a new faction designed for slower players looking for more defensive strategies and a new unit for each pre-existing faction. What came out was an awesome addition to an already awesome game adding life and a good deal of improved gameplay to the mix, everything that a expansion pack is supposed to bring. If you liked Dawn of War and haven’t picked this up, you’re cheating yourself from some more good hours of fun.

You can discuss this here

Thanks to islyfe for letting us know.

The Preacher pointed out that Gamespot posted their preview of The Outfit. The preview is pretty general, but there are a few things that are highlighted. For example, when you earn achievements it’ll give you the opportunity to unlock weapon upgrades for your characters. Here is a quick snip from it,

As with all Xbox 360 games, The Outfit will provide you a number of opportunities to rack up “achievements” that will add gamer points to your Xbox Live profile. The criteria for some achievements will be made available to the player, while others will have to be uncovered through experimentation. One achievement, for instance, will require you to take a particular hill within a specific mission without suffering any casualties. But unlike most 360 games, which merely give you bragging rights to go along with your gamer points, The Outfit’s gameplay will actually be affected as you unlock more achievements. For every two you complete, one of your characters’ weapons will be upgraded, making them more powerful, enhancing fire rate, and so on.

Check out Gamespot’s Outfit preview. You can also discuss the article in this thread. Thanks to The Preacher for the heads up.

IGN put up their preview of The Outfit for the Xbox 360. Their preview is based off a single-player demo that they viewed and played. They make a lot of positive comments about the “Destruction on Demand” and how tough the AI was. Here is a quick snip from it,

The enemy AI is tough and challenging in the single-player game. Once you’ve grabbed an enemy spawn point, you’ll want to call in a few extra troops and some machine guns to watch over it. Enemies will continually return to old spots in the attempt to re-capture their former territories. If you’re careless, you’ll pay later. Also, from the demo we watched, you’re going to die a lot, meaning there is a certain level of trial-and-error gameplay as well as quick-and-dirty strategies required.

Go check out IGN’s Outfit preview. There are also a few new images up in their gallery as well. I like the Sherman tank with the rocketpack attachment :D. You can also discuss about the preview in this thread.

Gamespot posted their Q&A with Producer John Johnson of Relic about Relic’s upcoming World War II RTS game, Company of Heroes. A good overview article if you want to learn more about the game. Here is a quick question and answer from the article,

GameSpot: Most of us got our last look at Company of Heroes at E3 more than six months ago, so what’s been going on since then with the game? How far along are you in development right now?

John Johnson: We’re in full production and have been very busy since E3. We’ve been spending a lot of our time developing content, with a major focus over the summer and fall on developing the multiplayer gameplay mechanics. We’re down to the iterative tuning-and-polish phase of multiplayer now, which will give us ample time to fine-tune and perfect our gameplay well above what we’ve been able to do in any of our past products. In conjunction with this, we’ve also been very busy developing the single-player game to ensure it matches the intensity and excitement of this year’s E3 demo in every mission.

Enjoy the Company of Heroes Q&A article. There is also a video link in the article if you havn’t seen it in action yet.

General Blaze started up a thread for this article. You can head over to this thread to discuss.

Sweden’s first national Dawn of War championship has ended this weekend. Their first national champion is Santiago, who posts on our forums under the alias santiago4ever, will be taking home some of the THQ/Relic merchandise that was used to sponsor this tourney.

You can download two action-filled replays from the final games here and here, and a full-sized movie with excerpts from various tourney games will be uploaded here shortly.

If you are into DoW movies you can also download the trailer.

Congratulations to Santi and thanks to Hybris for bringing this to my attention.

The third annual 1UP awards are under way. Users can now go and vote for their favourite PC Games of 2005, and Winter Assault made it on the Ballot.

The 1UP Awards will be voted on by the 17-million-plus magazine readers and 10-million-plus online visitors of Ziff Davis Media Game Group’s leading gaming properties which include the 1UP Network (1UP.com, FileFront.com, and GameTab.com), Electronic Gaming Monthly, Computer Gaming World, and Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine. The winners will be posted online on 1UP.com and featured in the March issues of the magazines.

You can cast your vote here. Now go and vote for WA!

Thanks to Slow_Runner for bringing this to my attention.