E3 2016 – Day 2 Recap: Livelock, Lego Worlds, Dawn of War III, and Mount & Blade II

Dawn of War III

In a world over-saturated with shoddy and half-assed Warhammer licenses, one franchise rises from the ashes from an age long past, when said license still meant instant eternal glory. After so many years, Dawn of War III is (hopefully) less than a year out from righting so many wrongs inflicted upon the Warhammer 40k universe, with a new rendition combining some of the best ideas from Dawn of War I with II in one of the shiniest packages the RTS genre has ever hosted.

Dawn of War III was barely announced over month ago, with press previewing a brief demo just weeks before E3. As such there truly isn’t much to be shown, but in the short fifteen minute demo on display, much can still be gleamed of design direction. For starters, Space Marines still make Starcraft’s Terran look like a bunch of whiny cigar puffing bitches. So when the elite hero space marine Gabriel Angelos takes the field against his advisors’ wishes to stand down against an army of Eldar swarming the new ice lava (yes that makes sense) world of Acheron, you know it’s going to be a bad day for anyone in the room rooting Eldar.

The scenario shown was a heavily scripted story driven scenario that either stands as a tutorial to adjust to the control scheme, or a sign of extended campaigns to tell a deeper story come launch. I’m leaning towards the latter as the efficient actions per minute one can utilize to get the most dps out of your single elite hero is deep enough to ensure engaging and challenging gameplay in such scenarios. If they were aiming for purely base vs base RTS action, I see little reason to make control over a single character that engaging. Elite Heroes, of which you can choose to bring three into any battle, are in fact the pinnacle of gameplay. They tend to stand large and proud, dwarfing your standard stock units, influencing them with various beneficial passives and unleashing a slew of tactical abilities capable of changing the tides. With multiplayer ever in mind, said abilities offer substantial tells, allowing high action per minute players to read and respond with appropriate counters, should they be overseeing the battlefield at the right moment. Add in the return of base building from Dawn of War I and you have a recipe for an RTS that not only offers outside of the box thinking, but rewards a very different style of play from every other RTS on the market. Even veterans of the series will be licking their wounds and recalculating their moves to learn and master the skills required to excel on Acheron.

Oh are you tired of generalizations? Fine let’s break down some examples of how elite heroes can alter the tide of battle. Gabriel for instance utilizes a kit making him ideal for active front line players. With proper timing, his retribution shield spin can turn a deadly enemy artillery barrage into a bunker buster as he not only shields from damage, but reflects projectiles back towards the attackers, inflicting a higher rate of damage than the attacks typically do! Need something bigger? Jucier? Then let’s talk Lady Solaria, a Warlock class Super Elite mech that exists for two reasons: punishing her enemies, and punishing potential players daring to initialize the game in 720p or lower settings. I mean, this Super Elite is huge. It felt like Gabriel had a mechanical hillside following and supporting his battalion. And her bulk was not merely for show, as her ability offers a ground painting mechanic, setting up six target locations for a fast barrage of missiles to decimate. These marked locations are, however, visible to your foe. So a commander thinking on his feet can dash or dodge vital units out of the blast radius before missiles land. Sure it won’t be easy, but high skill ceiling should always be rewarded in the RTS realm if the game is ever going to be taken seriously.

Surprisingly the sweet ability skills aren’t just limited to the captains. As the Eldar forces started to get serious, our demonstrator Matt Kernachan dropped a powerful Space Marine mechanic with Death from Above. With a satisfying smash and clank, giant storage pods meteored from the heavens, sending Eldar flipping through the air at impact before their charred corpses were put down by newly emerging reinforcements. One particularly nasty reinforcement came in the form of the Assault Marines, packing the ability Dash Dive. While less spectacular than the elite hero skills, the ability to near instantly reposition such heavily armored front liners right in the face of the enemy was invaluable in the completion of the task at hand. Particularly when facing off with a returning and evolved mechanic from Dawn of War II, Heavy Cover. Building on the idea of objects in the map that provide defense from a ranged foe in a given direction, Heavy Cover turns a point capturing mechanic into a full 360 defense against ranged fire. While this shield is not unlimited, if two equally matched fighting forces engage while one is behind Heavy Cover, you can bet the uncovered units are going down before they even make a scratch on the protected squad. But, these fortresses have two clear cut weaknesses. One once again involves returning to the dash dive to turn a ranged war into a melee skirmish. By diving in and taking out your foes, you can recapture the Heavy Cover for your own faction. But in scenarios where multiple squads are hiding behind multiple Heavy Cover locations, pushing a single squad of units far ahead of your main fighting force will carry pricey and punishing consequences.

Yet again there is an answer for this that rewards carrying diversity in your base built army. In this case the Space Marine’s ideal solution comes in the form of beam soldiers capable of sighting and spraying an uninterrupted beam of death on a target. While decently long range and efficient in standard scenarios, the beams carry a passive of building in damage the longer you hold the beam on a single target. This sets up the stage for a patient player to offer protection from encroachment as protecting your beam soldiers while they inflict damage on the Heavy Cover activates a passive that multiples the damage dealt by the attack over time. In no time you will be safely and efficiently cutting down your foes’ front lines, forcing them to flee or attack you head on. And we all know how well that goes when Lady Solaria is set to paint the snow with a perfect line of rocket riddled corpses.

In this early stage, I expected placeholder art, idea concepts, and a lot of memes to carry the Dawn of War III presentation to the finish line. Instead we were thrust into a world built upon solid voice acting, a reactive and realistic feeling alien world, the return of a dozen features that made the first two games in the series such stand out titles, and a player controllable orbital laser of extreme particle effects as a finale. Not to mention reactive controls, and a slew of characters from both the Space Marines and Eldar that were clearly crafted by a 40k hobbyist who can’t believe he is getting paid to do what he’d be doing in his spare time all the same.

Fans of the series should rejoice, and those that were too busy buying into the Blizzard hype train for their RTS all these years should start paying attention. Dawn of War III is going to be a must own adrenaline rush RTS come 2017.

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