- King Art co-founder and Dawn of War 4 creative director Jan Theysen says the game's four faction campaigns were decided "super early" on
- Theysen says Warhammer in general "is fundamentally about the factions," and they wanted to make a cinematic experience
- He admits that the team's ideas "snowballed" until the campaigns also feature branching storylines and "70 missions"
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 is an ambitious real-time strategy game (RTS) featuring four campaigns and branching missions, because King Art was admittedly really enthusiastic about centering the factions in the story.
Speaking in an interview with TechRadar Gaming, where he'd also spoken about borrowing from the original Dawn of War's systems, King Art co-founder and Dawn of War 4 creative director Jan Theysen said that the decision to have four separate faction campaigns for the Space Marines, Orks, Necrons, and Adeptus Mechanicus was "the first thing we decided" because Dawn of War, and Warhammer in general, "is fundamentally about the factions" and "how weird and crazy and cool they are."
"You don't really learn too much or everything you want to learn about Necrons or AdMech if you play just the Space Marines and fight them in a handful of missions," Theysen explained. "And so we always said, 'Okay, no, no, if we have four factions, we definitely want one campaign for each of the factions.'"
The creative director said King Art also looked at what the "best" RTS campaigns were, such as Warcraft 3, and realized that it was "very important" to have a cinematic experience with cutscenes, heroes, and a story that is "more interesting."
Theysen went on to explain how the team's ideas kept evolving around the four faction campaigns; it also wanted branching stories and mutually exclusive missions. Eventually, Dawn of War 4's campaigns became something ambitious, featuring individual stories with their own progressions, and at least 70 missions.
He also confirmed that King Art spoke with Games Workshop about its four faction campaign ideas, which he reiterated was decided "super early," and collaborated with the lore.
"It snowballed basically," Theysen said. "I mean, we like art, and we like campaigns a lot, and so for us it was like a little bit like kids in a candy shop, right? And we said, basically, you know what, also, it would be nice if you could choose which hero to play. Then you have two different sides of the same story, or you can actually change how the story progresses, and in the end, we ended up with four really big campaigns and like 70 missions or something; it's insane.
"But, again, we like campaigns."
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 is slated to launch on PC on December 3.