September 27th, 2007

Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War - Soulstorm in development

THQ announced today that a third installment of their prized real time strategy franchise Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War is in the making, currently titled Soulstorm. Developed at their internal Relic Entertainment studios, the expansion will showcase a war that transcends planetary boundaries, taking conflict to a grand scale throughout an entire galaxy. The single player campaign takes us across 4 planets and 3 moons.

New units have been added to each race and you should expect two brand new playable races, out of which one will definitely be the Dark Eldar. There is no official word on the second one. It could be everything from the Sisters of Battle to the zerg like Tyranids. Upping the faction count to nine, these balance changes will break most existing play strategies by the addition of flying units, never before seen in the Dawn of War universe. The Dark Eldars are able to harvest souls from fallen opponents and use them as a third resource income. Souls are used to for "Soul Effects", abilities which affect the entire army or the game map as a whole. Developers promised the addition of multiplayer achievements, a system awarding metals to players with impressive winning streaks and other ladder related performances.

Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War was the real time strategy Game of the Year in 2004 and saw two expansions packs, Winter Assault in 2005 and Dark Crusade in 2006. News travel slowly at Relic Entertainment, especially if you’re going to judge this by the Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War official site, which has been last updated one year ago. I understand it’s a big franchise which has plenty of dedicated fans, not unlike this Papi_bob individual here, who won 74 ladder games in a row. I know that Warhammer 40k dates back into 1987, as a tabletop, dice rolling fantasy game and efforts have been made to expand its subtle flavor to computer gaming and even beyond real time strategy. Still, I haven’t heard anything about Warhammer Online and its fabled MMORPG goodness in a long time, so news indeed travel slowly around here.

Warranted or not, hype levels are minimal and I can’t tell if it’s either overzealous secrecy, the promise of a game that’s so good that it will sell itself or just a major oversight on Relic Entertainment’s behalf. But don’t despair, there is always a period of calm before the storm and clouds are seen gathering on the horizon: War is coming. Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War - Soulstorm is expected to be released sometime in spring 2008.