THQ's Hit RTS game, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War has been such a great success that they are planning to use the Company Of Hero's engine to upgrade the game and release a new game.

The games going to have plenty of new features that the COH game had and they are also keeping the original ideas of the first dawn of war, in addition I believe they are going to add additional units and features from the table top series (Finaly Chaos Dreadnaughts or maybe Special Space Marine groups?)

Anyways, heres some information acquired from an interview (couldn't access it from school computers but i used another forum.. will update with more information)


- Uses the Essence 2.0 engine with Havok physics, all optimised for DX10 and multicore support.
- It looks great, think of the DoW intro but with a bit less polygons here and there (in terms of lighting and all that it looks almost exactly the same).
- Units also use CoH-like unit AI for awareness and pathfinding to find cover and such.
- [b]While DoW 2 shares the same (upgraded probably) engine as CoH[ it won't be "CoH in space",/B] while soldiers in CoH will ask themselves if flanking the enemy is the right option, in DoW2 it will be more like Space Marines asking themselves if they should use their jetpacks to jump over an Ork squad to attack them in the back. Different settings, different kinds of warfare.
- Preview only showed a destroyed city landscape, akin to DoW (but more detailed), other tilesets will offer deserts, jungles, mountains and other cities.
- Only the Orkz and Space Marines were revealed, more races on the way obviously and to be to revealed later this year (though how many isn't known).
- Co-op campaign for both the Orkz and Space Marines, apparently not for the other to-be-revealed races.
- More focus on making units and squads unique; every unit has got a name (at least in the campaign it seems), more details and more animations.
- Relic wants to give players rewards at the end of a mission like wargear (armor, weapons, rare objects); "Let's pimp out squads with cool stuff!", you will see these items in-game as well of course.
- You'll fight your way through the campaign with the same squads.
- You can't control more than six squads! I am not sure if this is campaign-only but the preview made it sound like it wasn't.
- The squads are going to be a lot more interesting than before though.
- A squad leader (one or several?) will need to survive if you want to complete a mission; you really have to look out for your squads and don't treat them like cannon fodder.
- There is a lot more interesting commentary from the units as well; if your SM commander is holding a Thunder Hammer f.e. then the opponent will specifically comment on that, Ork Warchief saying something like "Ooh, nice hammer, but mine is bigger!". The warchief will say something else if the commander doesn't have the hammer.
- The campaign lets Space Marines operate from a spaceship, you'll get a view of an underlying planet and you'll be able to choose from different missions (which are tagged with difficulty colours, green, blue and red).
- Certain reward items won't be useable at once in the campaign, so they'll be taken back to the SM spaceship for research.
- Dreadnought can now also trample Orkz.
- No sea or air units (though jetpacks are still in of course).
- Development team of 55 people has been working on it since September 2006.
- Release in early 2009 or later.[/quote]

[quote]-Buildings can be occupied (like in coh)
-Environment completely destructable ^^
-Vehicles are bigger (there were only a couple of dreadnought shots)
-LOTS of blood (i saw the screens and thought LOL)
-Over the top finishing animations
-when units are in melee, pieces of battle armor can be chopped off in the action


[/quote]

The game is planned to be released in 2009 or later as the quote says, but imWhile DoW 2 shares the same (upgraded probably) engine as CoH[ it won't be "CoH in space",/B] while soldiers in CoH will ask themselves if flanking the enemy is the right option, in DoW2 it will be more like Space Marines asking themselves if they should use their jetpacks to jump over an Ork squad to attack them in the back. Different settings, different kinds of warfare.
- Preview only showed a destroyed city landscape, akin to DoW (but more detailed), other tilesets will offer deserts, jungles, mountains and other cities.
- Only the Orkz and Space Marines were revealed, more races on the way obviously and to be to revealed later this year (though how many isn't known).
- Co-op campaign for both the Orkz and Space Marines, apparently not for the other to-be-revealed races.
- More focus on making units and squads unique; every unit has got a name (at least in the campaign it seems), more details and more animations.
- Relic wants to give players rewards at the end of a mission like wargear (armor, weapons, rare objects); "Let's pimp out squads with cool stuff!", you will see these items in-game as well of course.
- You'll fight your way through the campaign with the same squads.
- You can't control more than six squads! I am not sure if this is campaign-only but the preview made it sound like it wasn't.
- The squads are going to be a lot more interesting than before though.
- A squad leader (one or several?) will need to survive if you want to complete a mission; you really have to look out for your squads and don't treat them like cannon fodder.
- There is a lot more interesting commentary from the units as well; if your SM commander is holding a Thunder Hammer f.e. then the opponent will specifically comment on that, Ork Warchief saying something like "Ooh, nice hammer, but mine is bigger!". The warchief will say something else if the commander doesn't have the hammer.
- The campaign lets Space Marines operate from a spaceship, you'll get a view of an underlying planet and you'll be able to choose from different missions (which are tagged with difficulty colours, green, blue and red).
- Certain reward items won't be useable at once in the campaign, so they'll be taken back to the SM spaceship for research.
- Dreadnought can now also trample Orkz.
- No sea or air units (though jetpacks are still in of course).
- Development team of 55 people has been working on it since September 2006.
- Release in early 2009 or later.

-Buildings can be occupied (like in coh)
-Environment completely destructable ^^
-Vehicles are bigger (there were only a couple of dreadnought shots)
-LOTS of blood (i saw the screens and thought LOL)
-Over the top finishing animations
-when units are in melee, pieces of battle armor can be chopped off in the action




The game is planned to be released in 2009 or later as the quote says, but im hoping its going to be sooner... Also your thoughts on this?

I like the Dawn of War series, i just hated playing it by myself. Kind of like sins of a solar empire. AWESOME multiplayer game, shit solo... though it still is epic.

Though upgrading it and making it a bit more strategy is going to be really nice.

Why didn't you tell me you had the Warhammer collection? I have all but Soulstorm right now and I have yet to be challenged by someone strategically... save for my Brother when he actually started using his damned head with the Eldar

If you want a match in that lemme know.

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Edit
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Located a Screnshot with the Space Marines and Orks Duking it out at each other.



also some more information regarding the game (Borrowed information from joo-see.com)

Powered by an enhanced version of Relic’s proprietary Essence Engine 2.0, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II boasts a non-linear single player experience and a fully co-operative multiplayer campaign. Set in Games Workshop’s highly popular Warhammer 40,000 science fiction universe, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II is being developed exclusively for Windows PC.

As an added incentive/bonus, gamers purchasing copies of the recently released Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm will be able to participate in an invitation-only multiplayer beta program for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II set to take place at a future date.

“The original Dawn of War and its subsequent standalone expansions have established the series as one of the industry’s leading RTS franchises,” said Brad Carraway, vice president, global brand management, THQ as he fought off a horde or marauding Chaos Space Marines . “Dawn of War II will re-define RTS gaming to gamers worldwide, delivering brutal frontline action and tactics, and allowing
players to get straight to the action with unprecedented fast-paced RTS gameplay and a full co-op campaign, all in stunning cinematic detail.”

“We started with everything fans loved about the original Dawn of War and then added more than they ever could have hoped for in the sequel into Dawn of War II,” said Tarrnie Williams, general manager, Relic Entertainment. “Leveraging our critically acclaimed Essence Engine 2.0, gamers will develop and lead an elite strike force through Games Workshop’s war-torn universe, engage in devastating combat among the ruins of fully destructible battlefields, and be immersed in an ever-changing single-player and co-op multiplayer campaign.”

For some more information regarding the game, Grab a Orbital Drop pod and Land in www.dawnofwar2.com Territory.