A New Take On The Best Kind Of RTS Combat
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War has long been a fan favorite real time strategy game, not just for its grimdark universe but for the way battles actually look and feel. One of the biggest reasons is its famous sync kill system. Instead of faceless units swinging in place while health bars drop, Dawn of War fills the screen with cinematic executions, dramatic duels, and brutal finishers that look like they came straight out of a movie.
You might be zoomed out watching lasers and explosions plaster the battlefield, but every so often your eye catches a tiny scene in the chaos. A space marine plunges a blade into an enemy, or an ork gets picked up and smashed into the ground. Smaller troops jump onto larger ones, plant grenades, and leap away just in time. These little vignettes make the game feel alive and help you get attached to the squads you command.
Dawn of War 4 is aiming to push that feeling even further with a new system the developer King Art calls the combat director. Instead of occasional paired animations, they want almost every visible attack to have a real counterpart, turning fights into dynamic, back and forth clashes rather than static stat checks.
How The New Combat Director Changes Battles
Animation director Thomas Derksen from King Art explained that most players know the classic sync kill system from the first Dawn of War, but Dawn of War 4 is designed around synced combat as a core idea. The goal is that every action you see on the field has a response, so you can actually watch two units duking it out instead of just bumping into each other.
An early work in progress example shows how this plays out. A group of orks swarm a mighty dreadnought. The machine grabs one ork and throws it aside, then stomps to clear some space around it. Finally, a couple of persistent orks manage to climb up its arm and start hacking away with axes. Instead of a simple melee blob, the scene looks like a desperate struggle where every unit feels like it has weight and intent.
Under the hood, King Art is using a power level system to control these animations. Units receive power ratings, and the game uses those to decide which paired actions make sense. Some combat animations are unique to specific units, while others can be shared across multiple matchups that are close in power.
Derksen explains that there are sets of actions that only terminators can use against other terminators, capturing their heavy elite feel. Some of those animations can also be combined with units like dreadnoughts or ork deff dreads if the matchup still fits. On the other end of the scale, tiny gretchin units get their own unique action sets that only play out against similarly small troops.
This system lets King Art build a huge library of detailed clashes without every interaction needing to be completely hand built for two specific units. Power levels and shared sets give them flexibility, but the end result is that battles still look bespoke, physical, and personal.
Why This Matters For RTS And For Players
All of this animation work is not just about flashy visuals. It is about the connection you feel with the army under your control. Many RTS games reduce combat to health trading. Units stand in lines, swing through repeated animations, and numbers quietly tick down. Dawn of War always wanted to be different. It aimed to make you care about that particular squad of marines or that heroic commander diving into the fray.
The combat director in Dawn of War 4 is designed to renew that sense of ownership. Watching your Force Commander take on a demon in a one on one duel is far more memorable than watching two health bars meet halfway. The more the game sells the idea that these are individual warriors with weight and personality, the more satisfying it feels to win or painful it feels to lose them.
Derksen recalls what made the original Dawn of War stand out to him as a player. It was not only the brutal finishers. It was how you could tweak your squads. You could equip them with different weapons, upgrade their gear, and add leaders like sergeants. The combination of customization and cinematic combat made you feel like these were your guys. They were not just disposable units. They were a squad you had built and geared up, now fighting for you on the frontline.
Dawn of War 4 seems to understand that this emotional link is a core part of the series identity. By investing heavily in animation systems and reactive combat, King Art is trying to recapture what made the original so beloved in the first place, while still pushing the spectacle further.
Looking Ahead To Release
Dawn of War 4 has already gone through a couple of closed alpha tests, giving a few players an early look at where the combat is heading. The game has a Steam page where you can follow its progress, check for future tests, and keep an eye on development updates.
The current target release window is 2026, which means there is still a long road ahead for balancing, polishing, and expanding the combat director system. For fans of the series and RTS enthusiasts, that wait can feel tough, but it also means the team has time to refine those key battles until they look and feel just right.
In the meantime, it is easy to see why long time Dawn of War fans still revisit the older games. There are countless sync kill compilations on YouTube, showing off some of the most brutal and stylish executions in RTS history. Dawn of War 4 is clearly built on that legacy, and if King Art can deliver on its promise, we might be heading toward one of the most visually satisfying and emotionally engaging RTS experiences yet.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rts/dawn-of-war-4s-combat-director-goes-even-further-than-the-original-games-sync-kill-animations-i-dont-think-any-rts-has-really-done-anything-like-this-in-the-past/
