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UK Exclusive: Dawn Of War II Q&A - Part 2 Feature
Jon Wilcox
10/06/2008
Dawn of War II producer, Mark Noseworthy continues to discuss the finer aspects of next year's genre-busting sequel...
In the first part of our interview with Dawn of War II producer Mark Noseworthy, he confirmed that the action-RTS follow up would be a PC exclusive, that it's optimised for multi-core system, and spoke about the game's addition of stronger character attachment. For this second (and final) part, TVG chats about the integration of more advanced AI, the variety in tactics, and the co-op gameplay of Dawn of War II, which is set to explode onto the PC during Spring 2009.
TVG: One of the things that the RTS genre has benefited from with the continued advancement of hardware is improved AI, along with path-finding and a sense of self-preservation in the troops. With the multi-core optimisation of Dawn of War II, how else has AI been improved?
We're really spending our time on the AI. Chris Jurney was the AI Programmer from the original Company of Heroes, and he's working on Dawn of War II. It's a challenge he's really excited about because there are World War II strategies and tactics, and then it's how are guys going to behave forty thousand years in the future, right? What are Space Marines like versus Orks versus maybe other races 'if' we have them in the game.
We're not so much creating new features, but taking things that he [Jurney] worked on in the original Company of Heroes and try to refine them so it suits 800 pound super-soldiers. What would they do in this scenario? For instance, Space Marines would never get on their belly and crawl around like the soldiers do in Company of Heroes. It's lame, they'd look like cowards when they're being shelled. At most, they'll crouch; they might crouch-walk. That's what they do, right? They don't go around prone on the ground. They never really get fully suppressed like in Company of Heroes where the guys would become useless. In Dawn of War it's about 'Ok, they're suppressed now - but they shouldn't be useless!" Maybe they can't fire back, but they're going to seek cover so they can break the suppression...so that's what they do!
We're spending our AI time asking what type of behaviours would you expect from Space Marines or Orks or the War Boss in an environmental game.
TVG: But does the AI also adapt with counter-flanking and other counter-measures?
The way I like to see it is that there are new tactics now because it's based in the Warhammer universe. Everything was based in reality before, you had suppress, flank, destroy over and over again - it was cool, it was a really awesome experience. But now you have Assault Marines; so a bunch of guys are suppressed here, and you have big shooters on the other side of the ravine pinning them down. Assault Marines can leap across and slam in to the ground - they're like mobile artillery shells - and hack those guys up and tie them up with melee. Melee completely changes the tactical situation. We've got other units, like our Force Commander from Dark Crusade, that have the ability to teleport. So if he gets pinned down, he teleports behind the units and it's the quickest way to flank.
So there's a lot of new tactics introduced by virtue of the IP. There are units that literally use magic, so what kind of tactics are involved in magic? You go beyond just 'suppress, flank, destroy' to all these different variations, which we think are pretty cool.
TVG: You mentioned some of the units from the Dawn of War expansion packs. Now that you have this clean slate again with Dawn of War II, will any of these get scaled back, and if that's the case, how do you feel the hardcore will respond?
I wouldn't say that we're scaling anything back; in terms of excitement, we think things will be cranked up to the proverbial eleven. You saw the orbital bombardment [in the presentation], we think it looks cool - we thought it looked cool the first time around - and we can do a lot more with it now. We are starting a new game, and we're going to put abilities and tactics and units where we think it fits.
Is it going to grow with future expansions? For sure, and we have to make room for that growth. I think that anything that is given up is for the benefit for the game, and we think players will understand that.
TVG: That's fair enough. The presentation also showed a very clean HUD. Whilst we're guessing that it's still a work in progress, how much of a balance are you trying to strike between a solid HUD and avoiding distracting players from what is a stunning looking title?
We're still working on the HUD, but one of the values is that we really want to make the HUD as clean and as minimal as possible. With our previous RTS titles, we've had a full bar with tons of stuff in there. But if you remove everything that doesn't need to be there, suddenly you get a lot more extra space. The games are pretty cinematic, they do look cool, so let's show as much of the battlefield as possible.
So that's what we're trying to do.
But not reduce the HUD so much that you can't play, right. You need there to be [some] buttons and certain things to be there, but we're trying to keep things as simple and elegant as possible
TVG: Something that wasn't mentioned in the presentation was co-op multiplayer. Is it going to be two-player co-op, and how will it work in the context of the Campaign?
We're not talking about co-op at the moment, except for the fact that it's going to be there, and it's going to be cool. It'll be really easy to do, that's one of the most important things. Once you have a Campaign where it has a certain stake, and your game is different from mine, and how do you join - all this kind of stuff we want to resolve these complexities so players won't have to worry about that. So co-op is going to be really easy to get into a match, and it's going to be fun.
TVG: I was just wondering because if players can make a certain path through the storyline in the meta-campaign, how would it be affected by any co-op play they take part in?
We're not talking about that, maybe in the Fall.
TVG: And Dawn of War II is still on course to meet its Spring 2009 release period?
Yup.
TVG: It's difficult not to discuss Dawn of War II without mentioning StarCraft II...
I've never heard of it before - is it like Warcraft? World of Warcraft in space or something?
TVG: I'd heard that it ripped off...
Space Marines? And Orks?
TVG: Well to be honest (wink, wink), I hadn't heard of StarCraft II before it was mentioned by someone at the presentation - I thought it was some sort of project given to the interns to do...
How do you think we compare to StarCraft II?
TVG: Well I haven't seen it running in person, but I think that visually Dawn of War II looks to be blowing it out of the water. Just the extra details going on, like the lighting, the smoke from the citadels - it really blew me away...which leads onto the question of how scalable Dawn of War II will be for players?
Well we're taking care so that the game is very scalable. When we started the project we bought machines that were old, and decided that the game needed to run on these machines. When it comes out, you're going to have a great experience with three and a half year old machines.
TVG: There also seems to be set pieces in Dawn of War II where players will have their backs to the wall. Beyond the actual ability to kick the crap out of an Ork, what sort of variety in set pieces can players expect to see in the Campaign - how do you keep that fresh?
Well it's really about the objectives of the mission, right. Are you taking an area? Are you defending an area? Are you defending a boss? You're going to find more variety than usual because you as a player can make choices about what you're going to equip your squads with at the beginning of a mission. You might equip your Devastators with flamers, I might put mine with an Epic Heavy Bolter. My Force Commander could have a Stormshield and hammer combo; you'd equip your Force Commander with a Plasma Gun and all that kinda stuff. We're both going to have very different experiences, and we'll both have to use different tactics, even though we're both playing as Space Marines. So that scene you saw with a stand-off between Orks and Space Marines [earlier] may be different if you'd used different gear and put different war armour on...
TVG: So it's another way of adding replayability into the game, beyond the multiplayer and the meta-campaign?
Yeah - like, how are you going to assault an Ork truck if you don't have melta-bombs? You have to find another way - perhaps you have missile launchers? Maybe you're going to throw lots of grenades. Maybe you're going to use something to stop the vehicle and flank them and hit it from behind. If you have melta-bombs, then you can just use it right there and 'Pfffffffffffffffs!' the vehicle explodes. There's a lot of variety to the tactics, and a lot of times it'll depend on the types of war gear you bring in.
TVG: Relic is an action-RTS pioneer. Ultimately, do you guys see yourselves as pulling the genre as a whole kicking and screaming into a better future?
I think so, yes. I guess that's what we're sorta trying to do with Dawn of War II. There are a lot of RTS developers moving away from RTSs - maybe they think the genre is stale or they don't know where to take it. You see some developers really pulling back and moving into different areas. It's a part of our DNA - it's what we're good at - and we think there's still a lot of room for innovation. We don't think the genre needs to be stuck in the 1990s; we think there's a lot of stuff to add, and stuff we've added, and want to continue building!
TVG: Thanks a lot Mark.
TVG would once again like to thank Mark Noseworthy at Relic and Greg Jones at THQ for the latest insight into the development of Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II. Expect more information in the coming months as the PC exclusive gets closer to its Spring 2009 release!
Anonymous
Date Added:Tue 2nd Sep 2008 20:31
Anonymous
Date Added:Wed 30th Jul 2008 23:52
light is now darkness
Date Added:Wed 9th Jul 2008 19:51
warhammer 40k :D
Date Added:Wed 25th Jun 2008 12:28
Anonymous
Date Added:Sat 21st Jun 2008 12:49
DoW 2 is by far my most anticipated game for 2008 & 2009 combinned.
Anonymous
Date Added:Fri 20th Jun 2008 20:53
DOW2 = innovation to the highest degree
Anonymous
Date Added:Fri 20th Jun 2008 12:45
- squads - old
- morale system - old (Cossacs 2 or something)
- resource system - old (Z)
- small scale, macro-less gameplay - old (Ground Control 2, and many others, including RTT titles)
I could go on and on... [ Read full comment... ]
Anonymous
Date Added:Sun 15th Jun 2008 22:17
TheAnhilator95
Date Added:Fri 13th Jun 2008 17:12
Glyndwr
Date Added:Tue 10th Jun 2008 12:11
And that's before you take into account the rest of the stuff Relic is adding into i... [ Read full comment... ]