By John Walker on September 28th, 2009 at 5:11 pm.
There’s a first trailer for Dawn Of War II: Chaos Rising. It contains: some ice. And a gold man. For less than a second. And that’s it. But if you’re JUST SO PUMPED about the new expansion, perhaps that will be enough?
Not quite there yet, methinks. Teasing a barely announced game is one thing. Teasing an expansion pack without showing any of the game… not the most inventive marketing. Oh, but we posted it. Damn.
28/09/2009 at 17:18 Wooly says:
How informative!
28/09/2009 at 17:24 Gorgeras says:
What? I’m sorry but surely just ten minutes ago you thought you were a slave to the False Emperor. Now you know it ends today.
So why the sarcasm?
29/09/2009 at 11:40 Crispy says:
For the more observant, the trailer tells us:
- there will be snow terrain in DoW2 (which mappers and aesthetics-buffs will be happy about)
- there will not ONLY be Chaos minions in Space Marines armour, despite the careful labelling of the new faction as ‘Chaos Space Marines’ (the red guys with the horns look like Bloodletters of Khorne)
- The guy at the end will either be a special character in the single-player or one of the Chaos commanders in the multiplayer (probably both)
28/09/2009 at 17:21 Leperous says:
There’s more time spent showing ESRB information there than on Chaos. Truly terrifying.
28/09/2009 at 17:22 Girth says:
Yeah, I’m not sure what that was supposed to tell us – other than that Chaos is, uh, here?
28/09/2009 at 19:23 Orange Required says:
Rising, no less!
28/09/2009 at 17:27 Xocrates says:
While admittedly it doesn’t show much here’s the thing:
It’s Dawn of War 2, and it has Chaos in it.
So… what more do we exactly need to know?
28/09/2009 at 17:29 Bhazor says:
What happened to the idea of giving each faction a campaign? Certainly the Eldar and Orks should get though I admit I’ve no idea how they’d do a ‘nid campaign but I would love to see them try.
30/09/2009 at 01:50 FRIENDLYUNIT says:
I was a little disappointed too, especially as I’d decided the The Last Stand DLC was basically them fine tuning the Eldar and Ork content in preparation for development of campaigns for said races. As it turns out it was more like appeasement for players waiting for those campaigns. *sigh*
In retrospect it makes more sense that they add a new race to the game. It’s probably more valuable, big picture-wise.
Still holding out for an actual Eldar campaign though. It would be nice to see one of those for once.
28/09/2009 at 17:31 Heliocentric says:
HW3OIDC
Homeworld 3 or I don’t care.
28/09/2009 at 17:39 RyePunk says:
Wait so they lost a Planet?! And now its back… It will still be fun so plot be damned!
28/09/2009 at 18:00 Farewell says:
The plot reminds me of the classic sci-fi movie Event Horizon.
28/09/2009 at 17:40 Lack_26 says:
I want Homeworld 3 too, although I’m starting to doubt it’ll ever be made/released.
28/09/2009 at 17:41 subedii says:
To be fair the original Dawn of War 2 teaser was just a dude with a big hammer hitting an Ork (that was actually an in-game sync kill), and it barely lasted 30 seconds.
Hopefully we’ll get more info soon. Although what I’m more concerned about is that whilst I expect I’ll enjoy the campaign (and co-op in particular), I suspect that the multiplayer balance is going to take another big hit after release.
28/09/2009 at 17:45 Garg says:
Oooh cool a glimpse of some actual demons in there. Only seen chaos marines in the previous screenies.
28/09/2009 at 17:49 underproseductor says:
I was reading comments, but when I finally remembered about the teaser itself, It already had ended. Thanks God there’s an option to play it again.
28/09/2009 at 17:56 ChampionHyena says:
Ha-HA! This trailer is so short.
It is preposterous in its shortness.
I will say so.
On the Internet.
(Serious notes: I don’t even need gameplay. I would have settled for seeing some more units walking around. This, uh… was this time well spent? For the video editing guys? C’mon. YOU KNOW WE’RE PUMPED. Show us stuff we haven’t seen before. Like those Khornate knifey chaps. More of those.)
28/09/2009 at 18:10 Dave says:
Any word on what the single player is going to look like? I really need to finish the original game’s campaign before this comes out. Goddamn unwinnable late-game Eldar defense mission.
28/09/2009 at 18:51 subedii says:
You talking about the Avatar mission? That’s a really annoying one but it’s completely optional, otherwise I’m not sure which mission you’re having problems with. Best advice I can give you is to co-op it, that help enormously on any mission, and also makes the game a tonne more fun.
28/09/2009 at 18:10 Seniath says:
<oblig>This game is nothing compared to Starcraft 2!</oblig>
28/09/2009 at 20:04 Rei Onryou says:
You beat me to it…
28/09/2009 at 18:26 Senethro says:
Pah, such negativity. Lets get some low effort commenting of your favorite unit quotes.
Do you hear the voices too?
28/09/2009 at 18:29 jsutcliffe says:
Pah. Silly old Chaos. Orks is best.
28/09/2009 at 19:04 Garg says:
If they include obliterators it’s pretty much mandatory to include a quote along the lines of “Must…OBLITERATE” as in the original.
28/09/2009 at 19:10 Heliocentric says:
@jsut Ork’s da smartest an’ da strongest.
29/09/2009 at 18:23 jRides says:
Bonesinger: “It Grows as I play.”
28/09/2009 at 18:35 phil says:
It’s strange for chaos to be so emancipatory with its war cries, what next,”votes for the blood God?”
28/09/2009 at 18:51 Okami says:
Workers of the worlds, unite!
28/09/2009 at 18:35 Anthony Damiani says:
So, uh, nothing but Chaos?
Really?
That’s it?
No Tau, no Necrons, no Guard, no Dark Eldar, no Sororitas, no AdMech?
Ew.
28/09/2009 at 19:14 subedii says:
You were expecting them to dump in all the rest of the races at once or something?
Even the first expansion pack to DoW only had Imperial Guard alongside a new campaign.
I FAR prefer they expand the series by one race and at least attempt to keep multiplayer balance than introduce two or three and throw the whole concept out the window.
You know, what they did with their other DoW expansions.
28/09/2009 at 18:39 Alex Norris says:
Single-race expansions, yeah.
Also: thirty seconds to show us that the new campaign will feature ice environments, and a shot of a few bloodletters plus a glimpse of one of the new Chaos heroes. I consider this the video equivalent of releasing 3-4 screenshots.
28/09/2009 at 18:50 drewski says:
I feel this trailer has more Chaos than the original announcement, so clearly they are making good with their promise.
I expect the next piece of information release to have even more Chaos.
29/09/2009 at 02:39 Fumarole says:
Almost as if it were rising.
28/09/2009 at 18:54 cncplyr says:
Well I’m looking forward to it :)
28/09/2009 at 19:02 Bret says:
The best?
A race of savage fungi prone more to infighting ever since the GLORIOUS IMPERIUM OF MANKIND< LED BY THE GOD EMPEROR HIMSELF proved itself too powerful to assault?
I will admit to them superiority to Chaos, but that compliment is given only due to the fact chaos united could hardly stand a fair fight against an average Cathachan MRE.
29/09/2009 at 11:10 Kommissar Nicko says:
Catachan MRE? As in a Catachan meal-ready-to-eat? Those Catachans are real tough fellows, it seems.
28/09/2009 at 19:05 Lucas says:
Relic just take forever to balance things, and still make mistakes. I wasn’t that happy with the big upgrade patch that makes the game more spammy (and had performance problems), and thought the game was more fun to play during the open beta than anytime since.
My friends don’t want to pick up DoW2 because it’s very heavy on the unit-ability stuff. Unfortunately, this is a pretty dominant trend these days. I look forward to an eventual big swing in the other direction, maybe if the tower-defense genre goes offense, where you primarily focus on large scale maneuver and supply, with no individual unit control at all (really just a map to draw on).
On the other hand, Chaos was my favorite side in the original Dawn of War.
28/09/2009 at 19:25 subedii says:
Not quite what you’re describing, but for large scale RTS with a lack of unit “spell” micromanagement, Supreme Commander sounds like what you might be interested in. Personally I’m really looking forward to SupCom 2.
28/09/2009 at 19:28 woppin says:
Lucas,
Show them battle for supremacy, it’s a pretty good advert for DoW2 and it’s what convinced my friends to get it instead of continuing with Demigod, which is a lot easier to play.
http://www.gamereplays.org/dawnofwar2/portals.php?show=page&name=dawn-of-war-2-battle-for-supremacy-episode-1
Game 3 is the best if you only have time to watch one of them.
Balance is getting there, I think. That half the playerbase is playing Space Marines and SM are currently very weak in 1v1 is not a good situation though. There’s a lot of whining going on.
28/09/2009 at 19:44 subedii says:
A LOT, that point bears re-iterating. The balance isn’t where it could be and the community’s been getting pretty poisoned about it. Outside observers usually get the idea to stay clear altogether.
I wish the Tales of Heroes guys kept up their DoW2 episodes. IIRC they only ever released three of them.
28/09/2009 at 20:04 woppin says:
I’d like more episodes but since I discovered Pouncival and his amazing live casting I’ve stopped caring so much about the VODs people put up. The DoW2Live thing is annoying when things don’t work and people are late, but when there’s a good match (like the Germany vs South Korea games) being well casted it’s really something special.
The balance at the top end isn’t so bad. The best players are able to kite properly and can deal with things a lot better than the huge chunk of TS 15 – 25 players that are doing most of the complaining. It’s going to be interesting when the next balance patch hits on the 14th…SM need to be easier to play simply because of the volume of people playing them, the other races can be more difficult and it won’t be such a problem.
I played supcom online when it came out, it actually had silly micro in it because the projectiles are slow moving and simulated, so you could “dance” your units side to side to avoid incoming fire. Its reputation as being free of micro was disseminated by those who played it badly, though I haven’t played in years so maybe they have changed it since. SupCom 2 is already making the supcom players anxious since they are apparently making unit purchases up-front rather than the TA/SC style of paying for it over the course of production.
28/09/2009 at 20:59 Ansob. says:
I think the Space Marines deserve to stay completely wank for karmic reasons. I’m counting it as some sort of ultro-space-revenge for the decade of blatant GW favouritism.
28/09/2009 at 21:06 subedii says:
My main issue isn’t with the Space Marines, it’s with the Tyranids, those guys genuinely are OP. The two biggest gripes being AG horms and Spore Mines. I still can’t understand why they refuse to increase the price on Spore mines.
29/09/2009 at 04:04 Psychopomp says:
“I look forward to an eventual big swing in the other direction, maybe if the tower-defense genre goes offense”
Look up Netstorm
28/09/2009 at 19:08 Vitamin Powered says:
I know that there apparently isn’t very much to this video but….
All I get is a static blue green pattern. Audio works fine, but my player doesn’t seem to be launching the visuals.
28/09/2009 at 19:11 Vitamin Powered says:
Oh, apparently posting an opinion causes it work :P
Whilst some may claim this as evidence that all that was needed was a refresh, I think it’s obviously because the site demands that I post more often.
28/09/2009 at 19:23 Hug_dealer says:
i couldnt be more pumped about having chaos.
but the new gameplay style that came with latest patch didnt change the game for the better. They basically ruined alot of units when it comes to usefulness.
Still fun, but the combat just isnt as fun. My orks need alot of love, atleast for 2vs2 and 3vs3. they are balanced in 1vs1.
But i dont care about that anymore cause i got chaos coming now.
28/09/2009 at 21:04 subedii says:
My main issue isn’t with the Space Marines, it’s with the Tyranids, those guys genuinely are OP. The two biggest gripes being AG horms and Spore Mines. I still can’t understand why they refuse to increase the price on Spore mines.
28/09/2009 at 21:20 JM says:
Christ, that was the least threatening Chaos Lord EVER.
28/09/2009 at 21:38 theleif says:
Well, more threatening then “Rhinos. Rhinos! Our enemies hide in metal boxes!”
28/09/2009 at 21:32 Zindaras says:
I’m just saying, if you can get a Nurgle Lord with a Manreaper as a hero unit, and some hard-as-nails Plague Marines that have Feel No Pain, I am going to first pick this game up… and then become very predictable in my unit choices.
28/09/2009 at 21:35 Salem5 says:
Outing myself:
The News that there will be Chaos in DoWII makes me all happy-fuzzy-funny inside.
Also Powerarmor with Bigass belts are win-win.
28/09/2009 at 23:16 Ace says:
It will likely suck. DOW2 itself sucked, and I played it a lot. It completely lost the flavor of what made DOW so great. If I wanted a tactical strategy game I play COH since COH does everything DOW2 does better than DOW2 itself.
Also, the balance was horrible. I remember ASMs [having a lovely cuddle with] everything that could move for a long time during early release, then being nerfed into suckage for the remainder. I gave up when I realized I was wasting time on a game with no depth at all.
I suppose that’s a nice thing for some people, the DOW franchise is based on brutal war with heroic charges, huge casualty lists, loads of death and gore, and fanaticism all around. DOW does not mesh with the ideas behind COH, ideas like retreating units and carefully husbanding your units to gain vet, etc.
I almost want Relic to suck badly because I want change. I don’t want Homeworld 3 crapped up the way DOW2 was crapped up, with the best parts scrapped and only a figment of the original game left.
Anyways, that my rantfest. Keep buying relic stuff guys, because: “An open mind is like a fortress with its gate unbarred and unguarded.” and because relic told you too.
29/09/2009 at 04:06 Psychopomp says:
“Keep buying relic stuff guys, because: “An open mind is like a fortress with its gate unbarred and unguarded.” and because relic told you too.”
That’s where you went from “opiniated,” too “self absorbed prig.”
29/09/2009 at 00:27 Dan says:
I enjoyed DoW2 far more than DoW or CoH. Turns out the high body count and epic imagery was hella-fun.
I’ll admit, I haven’t given the multiplayer a shot and I never intend to. I can’t see the mechanics transferring over well at all. But then, much of the traditional RTS mechanics that CoH and DoW adhere to transfer to a rather dull or horribly frustrating single player experience.
Frankly, I’m about sick of mashing walls of units together, or micromanaging squads amongst cover points. DoW2 presented a powerful storyline amongst level design focused on maximizing glory and blood.
Yes, the mechanics are simpler but for someone who only has 20 min at a time to give to a game the experience was satisfyingly visceral.
You want Relic to suck because they aren’t adhering to the same-old, how-dull design patterns of RTS’ games, or won’t return to a series that internally they relent was never a success. Why on earth would Relic return to Homeworld when H2 barely recouped costs? They’re making buckets of cash making DoW and CoH games, and from my understanding they intend to continue the classic RTS refinement in CoH while focusing on action-satisfaction with DoW.
Just about everything’s there or coming down the pipe, so what’s to gripe about besides the lack of Homeworld, a low-profit, popularly unappealing series?
Oh right, this is the internets, where considering return on capital investment is distasteful.
29/09/2009 at 19:01 Heliocentric says:
Because we love homeworld?
29/09/2009 at 00:37 Danarchist says:
DoW2 was fine as a single player game, I have no idea why anyone plays it multi player though, lots better multi RTS out there. Personally I could give a crap about multi player twitch fest games myself, but having a Co-Op mode that I can play with my buddies is awesome. That feature alone was worth it for me. I wonder if you will be able to play co-op as chaos then? Or is it going to be against them?
29/09/2009 at 01:20 jalf says:
@Ace, @Dan, am I allowed to agree with both of you? Loved DoW multiplayer ,but singleplayer was pretty dull.
And I loved DoW2 singleplayer, and honestly don’t much like its MP.
Why can’t we get the best of both worlds?
@Danarchist: Yeah, coop was fun, but they they really dropped the ball by entangling it in GFWL and requiring both players to own the game. I’ve got a friend or two who are not big enough RTS gamers to just buy the game on my say so, but if I’d been able to invite them to a few coop missions, I’m willing to bet they’d have bought it by now.
29/09/2009 at 02:35 JonFitt says:
So Khorne is represented, but what about some Nurgle-love?
29/09/2009 at 02:58 Spoon says:
I’m with you on that one. Sadly, most 40k games with chaos in them go for a chaos united faction, a bunch of Khorne demons and maybe some horrors. The bloodthirster is cool and all… but throw us a bone here Relic.
29/09/2009 at 03:31 SasugaRIVAL says:
I hear you. I was really hoping for a Chaos God other than Khorne to get represented in this one.
Maybe Tzeentch so that they can confirm my suspicions that the Blood Ravens are actually a successor chapter from the Thousand Sons! (I don’t know if that’s even possible lore wise but it would be cool)
29/09/2009 at 03:38 ChampionHyena says:
Lordy God, what is it about video games that inspires this sort of freakish binary thinking?
“Dawn of War II SUCKED and it was the most HATEFUL TERRIBLE GAME EVER and Relic needs to DIE AND GO TO HELL AND BURN so that they can’t SCREW UP MORE GAMES and buying them makes you HORRIBLE CONSUMERIST SHEEP.”
Christ. It’s not enough to say you don’t like a game?
29/09/2009 at 04:08 Psychopomp says:
“Lordy God, what is it about video games that inspires this sort of freakish binary thinking?”
The games have nothing to do with it. People are just silly.
29/09/2009 at 04:24 Ace says:
@Champion
Well… let’s face it. Gaming is a hobby that is totally determined by the work of others. Yeah, there’s going to be a lot of disappointment if a title doesn’t live up to it’s name because lots of people have invested a lot of time and effort into relic games in the hope of steady improvements. Relic tends to do very well at the gate, but let players down in the long run (look at vanilla coh, and vanilla dow: both excellent games that slowly fell apart as expansion after expansion ruined them).
As for all the hate, yeah I spoke too soon. I play strategy games ONLY for the multiplayer, and neglected to mention that in my post. DOW2 single player was fine, provided some fun for a little bit for me. The multiplayer is horrific though, not worth a day of time when COH is such a better option and SC2 is coming out soon.
As for the “self absorbed prig” thing, that was my mistake too I guess. I was not trying to say that gamers are sheeple, I was trying to say that supporting and informing relic of improvements is good because Relic tends to have very open minds to their fans. For all the unbalancing they keep throwing into COH, enough fan freakouts always cause pretty rapid patching and exploits get fixed quickly. That’s nice from a company like Relic, and I want people to continue to buy Relic games because they have such open minds. Needed to be clearer, apparently.
29/09/2009 at 09:07 -Spooky- says:
DoW2 Coop is the money worth.
29/09/2009 at 18:39 jRides says:
This is pretty true – I am always disappointed with Warhammer 40k games because its not Epic 40k, and not just any Epic40k like NetEpic – but the Epic40k that’s in my head.
29/09/2009 at 04:03 HumanNature says:
By writing in that manner, they’re (in their minds) winning over friends and influencing people to change them into their mode of thinking and thus bring about the change that they seek.
29/09/2009 at 05:09 ReturnToNull says:
I dunno. If we take it at face value. Black & Gold Chaos obvious choice there is the Black Legion, which if they include any story at all with this, it should prove very interesting.
29/09/2009 at 05:13 Lanster27 says:
There’s only one of them, Chaos that is.
29/09/2009 at 05:48 subedii says:
If you’re not willing to despise the game just because other people tell you to then you’re just shallow.
29/09/2009 at 06:26 malkav11 says:
I really, really wish they’d make a non-Space Marine campaign for this one. Adding on to the original campaign is lovely and everything, but now the game has -four- races I can’t play in singleplayer and coop and still only one I can. Rather misses the point if you ask me.
And it’s doubly disappointing because even if Relic bollixed things up with the original game’s Space Marine only campaign, it looked like they’d figured out why that was a bad idea as of Winter Assault (whose campaign featured all four other races playable) and even more so for Dark Crusade (where -everybody- was playable, albeit light on plot). Given the different direction of DoWII’s singleplayer campaign, I can kind of understand why it might not have been practical to include other playable races, but this was their chance to remedy that, and they’ve blown it.
29/09/2009 at 10:11 Bravedave says:
@SasugaRIVAL
Unlikely lore-wise as the Thousand Suns were driven out and Prospero destroyed by the Space Wolves long before the second and third foundings.
On the other hand, 40k has rarely been a complete slave to its lore and its a genius idea!
In addition, as long as I can play multiplayer as Iron Warriors this expansion will satiate my lust for power, domination, skulls and spiky bits.
29/09/2009 at 19:21 Hug_dealer says:
I'll have to disagree about Dow 2 multiplayer. its is a joy to play, from the start of the game the battles are happening. Sure matches are fast, and it requires a quicker style of play than some other games, but that is what it is going for. thinking on your feet, adjusting on the fly. it is just as tactical as CoH, it just isnt as slow as CoH. Putting your guys behind cover and spread out will always defeat a blob.
I have hundreds of matches played in it, and i can say without a doubt i enjoy it more than i ever did DoW. Although i liked CoH better because the map style, and had more types of units. DoW 2 comes in right behind it.
Balancing is always a problem in every game. Not many people create games as deep as relic does. Starcraft is a simply rock paper scissors game, which made it easier to balance, and it took them a long time to balance starcraft, and people still do not think it is balanced.
30/09/2009 at 05:42 Dave says:
Hope this ends up in the right place. @subedii, the mission is actually one of the generic “foundry defense missions.” For some reason those goddamn Eldar keep rolling over me, and I need to replace my save game, which is annoying and arguably cheating.
10/10/2009 at 10:04 SeCALPHA1 says:
This tells us a lot if you know anything about W40k.
Space marines are not anti-demon, neither Ork nor Eldar. Imperial Guard is just a sub-sect of Space Marines (technically; same race), so that’s a no-go for Anti-Demon warfare (Chaos Space Marines)
Tau and Necron are too powerful to implement counter-warfare against Chaos let alone have the proper anti-demon weaponry (and the time for Relic to have balanced the gameplay with either of those two races). Dark Eldar are technically “demon” energy just the same as Chaos, so there’s no point in implementing them, either.
This game can’t possibly leave it up to Space Marines, Eldar, Orks or (if it ever were) Imperial Guard to be able to fend off Chaos Space Marines’ demon power/energy.
So, ,who’s left viable for anti-Chaos Marine (demon energy) warfare?
…….
I think I just sh*t my pants (dear god, Relic better have them in the expansion)
Answer: The hottest nuns in the galaxy – Adepta Sororitas!!!! (hope, hope.. hope… hope ….)