"I don't think RTS is back; I don't think it's ever really gone away": Dawn of War 4 devs on taking over from Relic and reviving a legend of the genre

Dawn of War 4 is back, and I’m feeling pretty good about it. You can read my full thoughts on actually playing it – or really, playing the one available skirmish about six times over and over – in our big Dawn of War 4 preview, but alongside that hands-on time we also had a virtual sit-down with DoW 4’s brand new development team.

The top line is that the studio has, at least at first glance, done a pretty comprehensive job of taking the original Dawn of War – and a few sprinkles of its sequels – and turned it into a properly modern entry. It’s honed in on the first of the trilogy as inspiration, for starters, bringing back classic aspects like full base-building and standard RTS style maps with requisition points and all the regular gubbins. And, aside from maybe missing a bit of campy levity here and there, the developers have also got the tone pretty spot-on, going full grim, dark, and down in the muck and mud.

Put it down on paper like that and it all sounds simple enough, but naturally for new developer King Art Games, a studio based in Bremen, Germany – which has only produced one RTS before, in 2020’s generally well-received Iron Harvest – following on from heavyweight strategy studio Relic was of course a challenge.

You might be wondering how a storied series such as Dawn of War came to be made by a studio with such a short history of strategy game development (albeit one with a long history of developing all kinds of games overall, from point-and-click adventures to browser games, via the Nintendo DS’s Inkheart, tactical RPG The Dwarves and more, stretching back to its founding in the year 2000.) The answer involves a little bit of serendipity – but also, a clear indication that King Art earned its role here on absolute merit.