Dawn of War 4 playtesters want the combat to take longer because of how much they enjoy watching it

Earlier this year, Dawn of War 4 developer King Art Games showed off its combat director, which synchronizes melee animations to go a step beyond the already impressive sync-kills that were a trademark of the original Dawn of War. As senior game designer Elliott Verbiest explained on the latest episode of Deep Strike, an interview series on Warhammer TV, they're worth slowing down the game to watch.

"We had a few closed alpha playtests," Verbiest said, "and one of the key points of feedback that we got and that really showed that we have something special here was, 'Hey, could you maybe balance the combat to take a little bit longer? Because we really want to see all these sync-kills and all the sync-melee combat that you guys have got going on.' People found it so spectacular that they wanted to keep seeing more of it."

It's something you don't get in a tabletop game—no matter how much effort you put into painting your space marines you'll always have to imagine what it looks like when a unit of orks swarms your dreadnought.

On the subject of translating between the table and the screen, Verbiest pointed out that some things are better not given a one-to-one adaptation—like the necron faction's resurrection orb, a device that lets them bring dead troops back to life. Well, what passes for life when you're an unliving robot. "When you are playing in singleplayer for example resurrection orb feels amazing," Verbiest said. "Your units have been defeated, here's something that brings them all back. Doesn't sound super great in a multiplayer setting."

Rather than letting necrons have an artifact that functioned as a big undo button for death, they added a necron building called the resurrection gallery. Once you've built one you can select a particular unit type, and if one of those dies it gets to come back—though not immediately. It gets across the same idea, that necrons don't always stay dead, without being annoying to play against.

"We've conveyed it now in a way that also offers other players a form of counterplay," as Verbiest put it. "You can destroy the structures, it takes time for the necron units to come back, so there is a window in which you can do things in that meantime. Those are the kind of things we've considered in order to still bring across that core fantasy, and especially for the campaigns we go all out for that kind of stuff."

Another example of that comes in the Dark Angels campaign, which will let you play as their primarch, Lion El'Jonson. It's a big climactic moment for that storyline, giving you access to a figure right out of myth and legend, but one you won't be able to play in multiplayer. Because how would you balance that?

Dawn of War 4 is targeting a 2026 release, and you can follow its development on Steam.