Dawn of War 4 expands sync-kill animations with power-level combat director

Pcgamer reports that Dawn of War 4's combat director will extend the original game's sync-kill system to create more brutal and varied animated encounters between units.

A work-in-progress scene shown in the coverage depicts orks swarming a dreadnought that picks up one ork, throws it away, then stomps to clear ground while other orks clamber up its arm and hack with axes. The team assigns combatants power levels so some animations are unique to particular units while others can be shared between match-ups of the right power; as Derksen puts it, "There's a range of actions that only a terminator can use against other terminators for example," and "gretchins then have their own unique action sets where they would match up against all the smaller ones."

The aim is to foster a stronger feeling of ownership over individual troops, a point Derksen reinforced by recalling the original game's impact: "The first thing that I saw and that they did different than most other RTS was... 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 for updates, and is targeting a 2026 release.

Key Topics

Culture, Sync-kill Animations, King Art, Dreadnought, Orks