- Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 creative director Jan Theysen says it was “a huge challenge” making a new entry in a series filled with so much lore
- Warhammer 40K experts at Games Workshop helped King Art Games figure out what lore to include in the game
- Theysen added that the team made judgment calls on gameplay mechanics even if they don’t necessarily fit the lore
King Art Games co-founder and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 creative director Jan Theysen has explained the difficult task the studio faced in building a new Dawn of War entry in a series filled with so much intricate lore.
In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Theysen said working through the lore was “a huge challenge” because when the studio discussed the opportunity for a Dawn of War successor, it knew there was “so much stuff” to figure out that was both official and unofficial. That’s when it contacted Games Workshop for its expert knowledge on all things Warhammer.
“That is really where Games Workshop helps a lot because they know their stuff, right?” Theysen said, explaining, “Say we need an ability that does roughly this: Is there some sort of gimmick or some sort of tool or anything established that a Necron Chronomancer could use?”
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The creative director said Games Workshop will go away with King Art’s requests and come back with answers and solutions.
“You really need Games Workshop for that,” Theysen added. “But also, it’s obviously a great problem to have, right? Because there are too many cool things in the universe and too many factions and too many units, and so it’s more or less like, okay, which of the cool things do we pick?”
Dawn of War 4 will feature on-field reinforcements, which Theysen mentioned was one of the “weirder” things the team decided to include despite it being an old system that not many modern real-time strategy (RTS) games have.
When asked how King Art balanced unfamiliar gameplay systems in a lore-heavy game, Theysen said the team “operates on two different levels,” and sometimes made judgment calls based on what works best.
“It’s either it has to be really accurate, and it’s really like, okay, this is exactly how you know this unit looks, and how they should behave, and we spend a lot of time to get it right, or we say, well, it’s a game, forget about it,” he explained.
“We don’t try to justify gameplay mechanics or something like that in the lore, if it doesn’t make sense, right? We basically say, okay, there is the one part that is the lore, that is the official thing, that’s just ground truth, and then there is also XP, and you can build units on the battlefield, and you can do all that RTS stuff that isn’t, of course, really part of the world.”
He added that the game also has the fan-favorite Last Stand mode, and there are Space Marines, Orcs, and Necrons fighting together, which isn’t exactly lore-accurate.
“Again, do not try to explain that or to justify that any other way than just it’s a game,” Theysen said.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 launches on PC on December 3.
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