Dawn of War 4 playtesters want the combat to take longer because of how much they enjoy watching it

Dawn of War 4 playtesters want the combat to take longer because of how much they enjoy watching it | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these Card Game ‘It’s kind of like you’re a butcher’: Hundreds of Slay the Spire 2 card ideas were cut during development in an ‘incredibly destructive process’ RPG Blizzard wants Diablo 4’s outrageous damage numbers to mean something again in Lord of Hatred, so it’s letting you crank the difficulty up to near-impossible levels: ‘It’s going to be really f*cking hard’ Action After playing the free demo of this bloody medieval carve-‘em-up, I’m praying the devs deliver a holy gaming experience RPG Casting demons like they were spells with Diablo 4’s warlock rules, but now I’m dying to see how Lord of Hatred will transform the other classes RPG Divinity: everything we know about Larian’s ‘most ambitious RPG yet’ Third Person Shooter Arc Raiders devs are uplifted by how kind players have been to one another, but admit ‘we’re way worse people than the community’ when it comes to engaging in PvP Strategy After a decade of stale turn-based tactics, Menace is a breath of fresh air FPS Should Marathon change its divisively fast Server Slam time-to-kill? 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From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we’ve got you covered. Signup + Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Signup + An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 Story Trailer – PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted 2025 – YouTube Watch On Earlier this year, Dawn of War 4 developer King Art Games showed off its combat director, which synchronizes melee animations to go a step beyond the already impressive sync-kills that were a trademark of the original Dawn of War. As senior game designer Elliott Verbiest explained on the latest episode of Deep Strike, an interview series on Warhammer TV, they’re worth slowing down the game to watch.”We had a few closed alpha playtests,” Verbiest said, “and one of the key points of feedback that we got and that really showed that we have something special here was, ‘Hey, could you maybe balance the combat to take a little bit longer? Because we really want to see all these sync-kills and all the sync-melee combat that you guys have got going on.’ People found it so spectacular that they wanted to keep seeing more of it.”It’s something you don’t get in a tabletop game—no matter how much effort you put into painting your space marines you’ll always have to imagine what it looks like when a unit of orks swarms your dreadnought.Article continues below You may like Dawn of War 4’s combat director goes even further than the original game’s sync-kill animations: ‘I don’t think any RTS has really done anything like this in the past’ ‘It’s my favorite feature’: Dawn of War 4 is adding a way to multi-attack enemies using a dragbox The Dawn of War 4 team isn’t worried about Total War: Warhammer 40k: ‘This is definitely a case of holy s***, it’s two cakes’ On the subject of translating between the table and the screen, Verbiest pointed out that some things are better not given a one-to-o