Dawn of War II: Retribution - обсуждение - Страница 9 - Форум Warhammer Архив форума Архив

DAWN OF WAR II : RETRIBUTION
Tactical variety and heroes with RPG-elements made Dawn of War II the hit it was.
This expansion lures you in with new building choices and races in the campaign.
How conservative does realtime strategy have to be? Blizzard needed twelve years to put out a new starcraft hat didn't shake the foundation of the game. Get ressources quick, gather lots of units and rush into the fray.
Relics Dawn of War II is a successful opposite of that concept. The focus is on few but characteristic heroes that gain experience and can be equipped like in RPG games.
Tactical decisions, quality over quantity. This recipe is found in Retribution, the new expansion, the second after Chaos Rising.
At the same time, Relic caters to the traditional fans of the genre. "Alot of people still want that common kind of experience in a game. They love to build hundreds of tanks and utterly crush their opponents with them." comments the lead designer Dan Kading.
Because of that, Relic wants to make both sides happy this time around. The production of units is introduced in the campaign, heroes stay.
Retribution is also more diverse in the amount of races you can choose to play the 16 mission long campaign.
Before Retribution, you were limited to the Space Marines, now you can choose 6 races. Space Marines, Chaos, Eldar, Orks, Tyranids and the new Imperial Guard, take your pick.
Every race has exclusive units, their own story and charm.
Even though every race has to accomplish roughly the same tasks, the mission design changes according to what race you play.
"It would have been ideal to have a completely unique campaign for every race, but it just wasn't possible to make it, and make it good, in the amount of time we had."
says Dan Kading, admitting that they didn't have enough time to do that with the quality they expect from themselves.
The main game, Dawn of War II was plagued by a flood of very generic and repititve missions. "We learned from that" Assures Kading "That's why we wanted to build every mission in Retribution from the ground up and include unique events that stay in your memory.
Playing trough the game more than once pays off even though the campaign missions start on the known maps.
But the story changes, depending on what race you chose, you clash with different opponents."
The initial position where the story starts from is equally critical for every faction:
Ten years have passed since the events of the last expansion, Chaos Rising. The Imperium of Man is annoyed by the persistent unrest in subsector Aurelia and orders the Exterminatus.
That's as dangerous as it sounds: A fleet of space ships arrives to completely destroy one planet after another with orbital weaponry.
To stop this method of cleansing the Imperium practices, your army jumps from one planet to another, using old teleport facilities (Most likely webways), to unveil the dark secrets of Aurelia.
Dan Kading explains why, out of all races, they chose the Imperial Guard as new playable faction. "Unlike the Space Marines, the Guard consists of 'normal' humans, which you can easily relate to. It's the most beginner-friendly race we made yet, due to the defensive capabilities it has ingame."
In comparison to the crazy aliens and superhumans, the Guardsmen feel almost 'tame'. One could think they made a jailbreak from Relics WWII game "Company of Heroes". Advantages in the vehicle department make sure that the guys don't end as cannon fodder. The Guard has the heaviest tanks and artillery in the whole game.
In the multiplayer gameplay, they are the only race with access to a vehicle in tier 1. The Guard can build and request turrets, cover, reinforcements and artillery. Everything turtle-players need.
And even with all the love for normality, the Imperial Guard has their set of heroes:
In multiplayer games, you choose between a female Inquisitor (offensive ranged), the Lord General (defensive healer) and the Lord Commissar (melee with support abilities).
During our visit at Relics office in Vancouver, we were able to play the first four missions of the Retribution campaign. We chose the new Imperial Guard as our faction.
We control the heroes Castor, Adrastia and Merrick in the intro mission. Typical for Dawn of War, each hero has special abilites which need to be used tactical. Castor for example can heal or request reinforcements from above.
Merrick can turn invisible and Adrastia can burn single foes with a burst of witchfire.
By capturing the first post, we received the ability to build troops.
A guardsmen squad for example costs 280 requisition, which you can get by simple collection of crates scattered over the map.
A complex build and ressource system is lacking. To make up for that, we need to pay attention to the population cap, if it's reached, we can't produce any more units.
A squad of guardsmen costs of 8 population points - well worth the price, as these guys can already repair buldings and vehicles out of the box, more skills and upgrades are unlocked later on.
During the intro mission, we were already able to get our hands on the Catachan Devils, strong in melee, the Stormtroopers with their lasguns or an HMG-squad for supression.
Together with the heroes, the diversity of the units is growing quite huge.
After our bossfight against a local boss-tyranid, we were able to reap our rewards RPG-style:
Gather equipment, distribute points in the 4 attributes we know from the other DoW II titles.
The Imperial Guard includes 8 unit types, each can upgraded with up to 3 upgrades.
You can choose to either spend points on your heroes, or upgrade your general units.
That way you can choose to either keep the focus on your heroes, or go to a larger scale and rely on your units.
The management of our troops wasn't the only thing keeping us on our toes in the intro mission - in the ruins the temple in ladon, we are chased by a superheavy Baneblade-Tank, and only reprogramming of a few turrets makes us able to crack it's hide.
It became really hectic during our escape from planet Typhon, where the Exterminatus had already begun. While battling it out with the other races on a race to our escape point, we had to watch out for the destructive beams raining down on the planet, which were thankfully shown by markers before blowing anything close to pieces.
The time limit of 20 minutes was also pushing us to our limits.
The used terrain type "blasted lava" will also be the foundation of new maps in multiplayer, where you can play the gamemodes already knows: Team Battle, 2v2, 1v1, TFFA and FFA.
Dawn of War II : Retribution is supposed to hit the shelves in March 2011, and will be a stand-alone game.
If the current generation of Dawn of War is done with Retribution isn't certain: When we asked, Dan Kading didn't dare to say if it's already over and if Dawn of War 3 is the next in line.
He only said "With the first Dawn of War, we said Dark Crusade would be the last expansion... three months later the producer approached us and and wanted to talk about Soulstorm.. I don't know anything about Dawn of War 3 at the moment." with an innocent grin.
Conclusion:
Abmitious Seconds
To call Retribution a mere "expansion" would be an example of exaggerated modesty.
I can finally experience with races other than the Space Marines and experiment with the new unit-building mechanic in the missions.
My focus will stay on raising my heroes, I just like the RPG-elements and the smaller scale.
Potential: Excellent.

T1 GLOBAL:
Imperial Guard Bunker 100 req 75 Global resources
Deploy an Imperial Guard Bunker that can be garrisoned by infantery can
be upgraded to a medical or repair bunker and can be booby trapped

T2 GLOBAL:
Leman Russ drop (as seen in video)

T3 GLOBAL:
Baneblade Drop (unconfirmed)
Global Nuke

Baneblade abilities (from vid):

Fire demolisher Cannon
Fire a large Radius explosion from the demoliher cannon This devastating shot consumes power

Fire Baneblade Cannon
this devastating shot consumes power (as seen in video; similar to what a looted tank of orks does)