Dawn of War 4's combat director goes even further than the original game's sync-kill animations: 'I don't think any RTS has really done anything like this in the past'

One of the reasons Dawn of War is still the best RTS is its sync-kill system. You'll be panning across the battlefield watching a disco storm of lasers go off, and in the middle of that inferno see two individual soldiers in a co-ordinated fight to the death right out of a movie. They'll finish with a dramatic impalement, or execution-style shots to the face. Big guys pick up little guys and crush them to death. Little guys climb big guys, plant grenades, then leap off. There's a huge variety of detailed animations for the many possible match-ups.

Dawn of War 4 will apparently expand on that with what developer King Art is calling its "combat director." As animation director Thomas Derksen recently told IGN, "Most people know the sync-kill system from all the way back from Dawn of War 1, but what we did is we tried to expand on that and instead have synced combat really. Every action that you see in the game really has a counterpart, so you see guys fighting it out between themselves. I don't think really any RTS has done anything like this in the past."

You can see an example of that at the 3.23 mark. A work-in-progress animation depicts orks swarming a dreadnought, which picks up one of them and throws it away, then stomps to clear some ground. Finally a couple of orks succeed in clambering up the dreadnought's arm and begin to hack away with axes.

Derksen goes on to explain that combatants are given power levels, and while some combat animations are unique to individuals, others can be shared between match-ups of the right power level. "There's a range of actions that only a terminator can use against other terminators for example," he says. "Some of them we will be able to combine with say a dreadnought or a deff dread or something, but gretchins then have their own unique action sets where they would match up against all the smaller ones."

It's clearly a lot of effort, but the pay-off is a sense of connection with the little dudes down there you don't get in games with more abstract combat. Watching from your godlike perspective as two units take turns to repeat attacks while health bars shrink by predictable amounts is nothing compared to seeing your Force Commander duel a bloodthirster.

Fostering a feeling of ownership with your troops is what Dawn of War is all about, and I'm glad it seems like King Art understands that. As Derksen says, talking about his experience with the original game, "The first thing that I saw and that they did different than most other RTS was, I had a squad of guys there and I could equip them with a range of weapons, I could upgrade them, I could add a sergeant and everything, right? It just felt like I cared so much more about these guys on the battlefield there fighting it out."

Dawn of War 4 had a couple of closed alpha tests last year, has a Steam page you can keep an eye on for updates, and is targeting a 2026 release. I'll be making the wait go faster by watching old sync-kill compilations on YouTube.