A friendly source has sent us these pieces of concept art for the game, used in the early stages of development. They're mostly by Billy Wardlaw, an environment and character artist at Vigil, with a little help from character designer Kolby Jukes, who's most recently done a little work on Mass Effect 2 (he designed frogman assassin Thane).

They're not exactly screenshots, we know, and being such a long-term project, early concept art is just that: early. They still look great, though, especially the Marine, so we figured they're worth sharing.

The campaign in Dawn of War II differs from other RTS games by cutting out base-building gameplay, creating a leveling system for units instead of for the non-existent base and making you play the entire story as the Space Marines. The result is a campaign mode that makes you get involved with the story even if you click through the pre-mission monologues and a fresh take on the RTS genre.

DoWII Principal Designer Jonny Ebbert* explains the dramatic change in gameplay as an experiment to revive the RTS genre: "RTS games are struggling. They don't reward players enough. And it sucks to start over" with base-level units "every level."

Relic's goal, Ebbert said, was to make DoWII feel good whether you won or lost a mission. By adding a sense of progression, the developer hopes to make campaign modes more rewarding for players without tying it to multiplayer with unlockable content. This means we've got new stuff like leveling up squads and carrying over equipment you find in one level to the next; and we've lost old stuff like holding resource points or tanking in a base for an entire level.

I started out with a generic Space Marine captain (whom I named Jimmy) and sent him to an area where Orks were somehow effing things up for everybody. Jimmy had a small squad of brawler-class units with him that hung back as their fearless leader charged ahead and cut Orks down with his manly chainsaw gun. Because there was no base to defend, I found myself moving forward naturally, just looking for people to fight and later, people to rescue. By helping out some other Space Marines, I gained three more heroes on my "list" that I could select to control the different squads.

At the end of the level, I got the chance to upgrade and equip each of the squads by selecting their leader and dragging equipment I'd found or abilities I'd gained by leveling over their inventory slots. Once everyone was set up with healing kits and things that go boom, I was ready for some co-op action.

A seasoned Relic employee jumped in with me. Co-op buddies can drop into your campaign at any time, but it looks like it's more worthwhile when you have more than four leaders to choose from. You can only take up to four leaders into each mission and in co-op, each player controls just two. The Relic guy wanted to swap with me, but it looks like you can't trade directly. You have to swap leaders by switching them out with whoever you have in reserve (hence the trading card comparison).

Once we got that figured out, we were ready to roll through a level called Gutrencha. Here again, I was feeling the RPG vibe as our two mini-armies plowed through the map, looking for Orks to attack. We didn't stop to hold points more than one time and there was no resource management to be had (since all the equipment is dropped by enemies or destructible objects instead of built at the base).

Equipment finds and XP are shared between co-op buddies but not between squads. So if Jimmy helped one of the Relic guy's ranged squads take down an Ork squad, the XP was divided between his ranged squad and Jimmy's squad. Because everything in co-op is tied to the host, you keep the levels you gain in co-op even if you're buddy drops out.

The impression I get from the two levels of co-op I played tells me that communication is crucial. There's no intuitive role for a player to have because we no longer have positions for babysitting the base or scouting out resource points. Without talking to your buddy to decide who's packing healing abilities and which way you plan on going in a map, things could fall apart pretty quickly if an enemy force cuts between you. Seems you'll be using DoWII voice chat for more than just trash-talking.

In the end, I stuck with the Relic guy because he knew the map and I had the healing packs. The "retreat" button still works if your leader is in trouble – it sends him back to the last point you took from an enemy force and he'll build up HP there – but because everything felt like a natural push forward, I just kept hitting the healing button so we could keep moving.

*Spoilers*

Thanks mostly to my impatience and partially to my buddy for already knowing the map, we got to Gutrencha fast. I think this was my first ever RTS boss fight that didn't involve blowing up a base. Gutrencha is just an Ork with an insane amount of HP and hammer that sends out a shockwave in one direction, knocking down units and doing a significant amount of damage. The only strategy involved here was positioning units around Gutrencha to fire from all sides and moving them out of the way whenever he aimed his hammer at them.

Gutrencha didn't bother me – but the next boss, Skykilla, did. He was essentially the same boss, defeated by the same tactics – only I was moving my guys out of the way of his jet pack exhaust radius. Here's hoping the whole game isn't like this, or it's going to be the most boring RPG ever.

*End Spoilers*

All in all, I'm not unhappy with what Relic has done with the campaign mode, especially since co-op is so painless. But I wonder if the more "hardcore" RTS gamers are going to feel robbed of strategy by forgoing the base building and the hold-this-point-for-this-much-time gameplay. I guess they can still get their kicks in the multiplayer modes – and maybe the later levels in campaign mode introduce trickier situations to strategize around.

Relic plans a post-launch demo of campaign mode. The multiplayer open beta is going on now and the full game comes out on Steam and on shelves February 19, 2009.

Check out the new screens. Official word from Relic is that co-op campaign screens are different from campaign screens because "co-op squads have slightly different colored armor." Just FYI.

*Yes, I apologized to him for misspelling his name last time. His response: "It's my fault for having an obscure name."

I'm the kind of real time strategy gamer who likes to sit in her base, bulk up, and eventually march a massive army across the map to blow up the other guy's base. Dull, I know, but comfortingly familiar and really awesome to watch once you unlock the higher-level units.

My hands-on with Dawn of War 2's multiplayer made me change my mind. And not because the complexity's been bitched or because there's less of what made the first game and its three expansions awesome. Sure, there are fewer factions (the campaign is limited to just the Space Marines), and the base-building has been streamlined so you don't really do any kind of bulking up via building. But these changes to the multiplayer campaign make DoW's much-touched fast-and-furious combat faster and keep the furious part furious even when your leader dies and you have to wait for him to respawn.

I started off with the three on three multiplayer mode. Developer Relic Entertainment explained when I arrived at the event that they'd sunk a lot of attention into this mode. Many RTS gamers ignore three on three, they said, either because they think it's unbalanced or they don't like co-op.

Me, I love co-op. And I love Aliens, so I chose the Tyranids for my first outing because they seem to be based on the Xenomorphs from the films. Each race has three classes – offensive, defensive and support. I tend to go for offensive because I like blowing things up, so I found myself playing as the Tyranid Behemoth – which sadly doesn't look that much like a Xenomorph.

I was dropped on a team with an Orc offensive force and a Space Marine support class. This seemed like a winning combination in the loading screen – we could see the opposite team had gone with an Eldar support class, a Space Marine support class, and a Tyranid offensive class (though we couldn't see their fancy thumbnail images – not sure if that was a bug or because they don't want you to know which colors the other side chose for their armies). Surely we could walk all over them since they only had one offensive class and we had two.

Dawn of War 2 will launch with something like six maps. Before you start sputtering in rage that Relic would dare deprive you of 14 other maps you'll never play – let me just say that the three that were available for the hands-on were pretty damn decent. The layouts were varied, the environments were distinct from one another, and really, how many maps do you need in a game that you just know will have expansions?

Our first map was a swamp/forest level with command points scattered out all over the map. The two base clusters were relatively out in the open and we could see them and all the command points on the map (again, not sure if this is a feature or a bug). Our base cluster and their base cluster were no more protected than the command points – so you conceivably could tank in your base, march across the map, and blow up the other guys. But you'd have to have the cooperation of your teammates; not just to defend you while you tank but to go out and fetch more resources so you can level up your base to produce kickass units.

As it was, my team didn't do much communicating. Team chat will be available with Dawn of War 2, but we weren't using it at this event – and because all the computers had generic names, we weren't really sure whose team we were on. At first I tried to be smart and follow the Orcs on my team – but whoever was running them didn't seem to know what to do with them. They took a requisition point and immediately left it without upgrading the point or building defensive structures around it.

I waited for the resource counter to build up a little and then opened my Tyranid leader's ability menu so I could throw down a tentacle-shaped generator to increase the output from the resource point and a hive thingie so that my units could be reinforced directly from that point if I got jumped while trying to hold it. This was the only building I got to do in the game – throwing down things to defend resource and command points.

Back at the base, I could level up the units I was producing if I had enough of the three kinds of resources – power, requisition, or command – but the base didn't change in appearance or size. Moreover, you don't really need to go back and view the base (unless you're being attacked there), because you can click an icon while out in the field to open up the base options without having to mouse back over to the base. The only downside to this is you might forget to move the new units you build from the base to the place on the map. This seemed to be the Space Marine's problem – he had at least two teams just sitting there for most of the game that only started doing stuff when the base got attacked.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Orcs ran into trouble somewhere in the middle of the map, but I was too busy trying to level up my base high enough so that I could build bigger units. In addition to tank and anti-tank type units, each race has an avatar unit that can deliver the mother of all bitch slaps in battle. I was hoping to build up enough to get the avatar because actually it looks most like a Xenomorph – but I only got as far as building level two sniper units and burrowers before the Orc leader went down and I was informed by the game that the Space Marine support unit was under attack – all the way on the other side of the map.

Not having time to demand what the hell the healers were doing out in the open and not with the Orcs who needed them, I dashed first to the Orcs to revive the commander and then tried to double back so I could re-take the resource point we'd started losing close to the base. While on my way, the Space Marine leader died, the Orc leader died again and I got shot in the back by an Eldar offensive class.

Despite all three leaders being dead, it wasn't completely game over. The red-blue gauge at the top was balanced precariously at one end of the spectrum with barely any blue visible at all, but somehow we didn't run out of requisition points and the Orc leader was able to respawn back at the base when the resource counter dropped to a level we could afford. (I think a dead leader starts off costing 800 and eventually goes down to something like 200.)

Despite our almost-comeback, the enemy made it to our base and started re-killing the Orc leader. And they'd grabbed the last command point and held it just long enough to win the game. Eager for more, I immediately clicked through the battle postmortem screens (like I care who scored Champion), and started up a new LAN game. Windows Vista (the OS the computers were running on) threw a bit of a fit when we tried to start the new game, but eventually, we were back on track and I got to try out more of the races. (Relic says DoW2 will be available for both Vista and XP).

I played once more as an Orc defense class alongside a Space Marine offensive class and an Eldar defense class. I couldn't quit the get the hang of the Orcs, although I adore their voice acting, and our team eventually lost the battle.

Third time's the charm. I tried out the Eldar offensive class, managed to communicate to one of my teammates that we should stick together, and in this way I was able to get my base to level three and spawn an avatar. Surprisingly, though, it wasn't my avatar that did most of the damage against the enemy – it was my Eldar leader. This Space Elf is one part tank and two parts Jedi; in addition to a life bar that only went down when a tank shot him in the face, he has a Force-push style ability that either knocks everyone around him down or can be aimed in one direction to shove attacking forces away.

With my leader, I took at least three resource points with barely any support from additional units. I wondered why this should be, when I realized that one of the enemy forces was taking points and not staying the secure them. Aha! That careless guy who was on my team before! I followed him with my Eldar leader, sneakily stealing points that this guy would capture and then leave. When I had enough resource points for that avatar, I spawned him in and sent him along with my Space Marine teammate towards the end of the map where the enemy base lay.

We were halfway through wrecking it when the game ended – our Tyranid defensive class buddy had held all the command points long enough to win the game.

I was really on a roll. Alas, I only had half an hour left before needing to book it to a study session, so I went in for one last game, choosing the Eldar support class (which appears to be the only chick in the entire game). The Eldar support class is a little strange – it's not entirely a buff character that can bulk up its friends and weaken its enemies, and it's not really a healer the way the Space Marine support class is. Instead, my female Space Elf Jedi seemed to be an agent of chaos. All of her powers were to the point of messing shit up for the other guys. For example, her farsight ability clears the fog of war so you can see the enemy's exact position on the map and she has a levitate spell that lifts the enemies around her off the ground, making them vulnerable to attack.

I died a lot with this chick – probably because I'm a brawler at heart. But luckily, a Space Marine class on my team had been following me, so I was able to revive her over and over again without having to wait for resources build up. I stuck with the strategy of having her go out alone to take points, so the enemy wouldn't notice her there until it was too late. This tactic helped me level up my base enough to spawn avatars, but it wasn't enough to win the battle. (I think I scored Champion in that round, though.)

I was sorry to leave the Dawn of War 2 event. It's a big deal to me when I walk in a skeptic and leave a believer. Relic Lead Designer Johnny Everett Ebbert said he felt bad about it. "It's like I've introduced an addict to smack," he said.

Well, I don't know if I'll be that obsessive. But I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for Dawn of War 2 when it comes out February 27.

THQ Studio Australia needs developers for Warhammer 40,000 project [Tsumea]
THQ Australia Careers [THQ, both via IGN]

WARHAMMER 40,000: DAWN OF WAR II - RHINO DIARY 1 [THQ, thanks Mike!]

“Our new partnership with GameTap allows both a brand new audience and fans alike to enjoy our titles and franchise games online,” said Adrienne Lauer, National Sales Director, Market Development for THQ, “Digital distribution is a great way to extend the reach of our properties and GameTap is an ideal outlet for this effort.”

See? GameTap knows what it's doing. The editorial content always seemed unnecessary to me anyway. More games is good! Hit the jump for the full PR.

GAMETAP SIGNS PARTNERSHIP WITH THQ

New deal includes top titles and franchises like Company of Heroes

ATLANTA – July 22, 2008 – GameTap, the first-of-its-kind broadband entertainment network from Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., announced today a long-term partnership with THQ Inc. that includes worldwide subscription play and digital download rights for a wide selection of the publisher’s games for Windows PC. Additionally under the new agreement, some THQ games will also be made available for free play on GameTap’s ad-supported website www.gametap.com.

“We are excited to be adding THQ’s roster of top content to GameTap,” said Ricardo Sanchez, vice president of content and creative director for GameTap. “With this new deal, subscribers and website visitors will enjoy great games from THQ, including Company of Heroes and Red Faction.”

As part of the new agreement, GameTap will now feature titles from the THQ and ValuSoft catalogues, including critically acclaimed games such as Company of Heroes®, Warhammer® 40K, Red Faction®, Supreme Commander®, Titan Quest™, Saints Row™ 2, PuzzleQuest and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.

“Our new partnership with GameTap allows both a brand new audience and fans alike to enjoy our titles and franchise games online,” said Adrienne Lauer, National Sales Director, Market Development for THQ, “Digital distribution is a great way to extend the reach of our properties and GameTap is an ideal outlet for this effort.”

Let me say that this game will be an RPG. That needs to be said, because when someone thinks of a Warhammer 40,000 MMO there is definitely some question as to the style of play: will it be an FPS, an RTS, or some other genre altogether? Relic has the RTS angle covered with the awesome Dawn of War series - we are making an RPG.

Got it? It's an RPG. Though, thankfully, not a terribly traditional one, as its combat sounds more Brothers In Arms than World of Warcraft, with the use of ranged weapons meaning you'll have to pay attention to things like cover, suppression fire, etc. Also touched on were the game's races ("...all of the races important to Warhammer 40,000 lore (not to mention the fans) will be represented"), it's setting within 40K's massive storyline and also NPCs and possible vehicle use.

Warhammer 40,000 Online [PC Gamer]

We still havn't had any contact with Games Workshop. We called them but they told us that someone would get back as soon as they could. Perhaps the fact that they do not chase us around 24 hours a day is a good sign? We'll soon find out. once more thank you for all conerns and support. Time will tell if it is worth something.

Website is closed [Teardown - Thanks Mark]