Dawn of War: Inquisitors and Special Characters

[Silent Bob]

OK, so I'm sitting here thinking "Hey, big strategy type game with the Games Workshop's WH 40K lisence? Pretty cool". But there's one aspect of it I'm really interested in seeing how it's portrayed (if at all).....the Inquisition.

In all the previous games under this lisence, the Inquisition has been so shadowy as to appear utterly absent (but we all know that the Inquisition is everwhere! BWAHAHAHAHA!); Chaos Gate, Liberation Day and even the platform-concole based Fire Warrior all lacked these insidious agents of the Emperor, yet they are some of the most characterful and important parts of the Imperium; maybe not in terms of battles, but intergral none-the-less. Anyone who's played the Inquistor game done by GW will understand just how individual these beings can be, and just how much power and influence they can wield.

I can see them applied to the game in a number of ways; as special one-per-army units that can be upgraded down specific paths (monodominant, radical etc.) and provide various sub-units, such as arco-flagellants and bound daemonhosts which would add some very cool stuff to regular armies. They could be used as "stealth units", passing themselves off as enemies to infiltrate their bases and scope out the land; perhaps they could even be potent psychers, melting opposing unit's brains and stuff. If it'd be possible (and I hope this doesn't get the thread cut for mentioning other games outside of Relic) the hero system in Warcraft III would work for it I think. Just a thought, what do you lot all think?

On a similar note, how about a few special characters? Finally, we can see who would win between Yarrik and Ghazskull! Or perhaps see who's the better psycher, Ahriman or Eldrond the Farseer?

Live long and die later - Silent Bob :sniper:

[ankara halla]

I really don´t think that adding such intricate organisations as the Inqusition to a RTS game a good idea. IMHO it can only go wrong.

The first (but by no means the least) problem is the compromise between "reality" (as known in the fluff of 40k) of the Inqusitioral(sp?) characters (or any characters for that matter) and actual game mechanics in a good RTS.
If you are true to one you´ll end up screwing the other, and to be realistic, this game is set to target a far wider audience than Warhammer 40k tabletop players which inevitably would make the option nro. 2 far preferable to the devs.

Me, being the enthusiastic Warhammer 40k fanatic that I am, would much rather not see any part of the official WH40k universe slaughtered in a poor transition from tabletop to computer screen.
I´d rather see Relic and GW focus on the parts of the WH40k universe that do translate well to a balanced and enjoyable RTS game. By no means does this mean a game which futilly tries to incorporate everything in the world of 40k to some hundreds (or am I being overly optimistic here... .. . ) of hours of quality entertainment.

Then again, maybe it´s just me but I do honestly feel the wonderfully complex universe created by Rick Priestly to be far too rich and diverse to be fully captured in a single RTS game, no matter who´s making it or how good it´s going to be, and as such am rather looking forward to an action packed thriller set in an enviroment we all know and cherish. If it means we won´t see every army or every unit or every character or every race or... .. ...then so be it!
A balanced game which stands on it´s own without needing to rely on the players to be aware of all the background related to the units used sounds to me like an ideal option.

[Silent Bob]

I do see what you're getting at Ankara; the game should be focused on a single aspect and do it well rather than try and incorporate the whole range of different games set in the 40K universe and make a right hash of it. Certainly the full game could be absent of a few units, a couple of characters, or even whole races and still be a quality game if they manage to get the content they actually do have in the game right. And true, the Inquisition is a very intricate organisation, working on every possible level to the defense (or indeed destruction) of the Imperium as a whole.

In my view though, even if they would become avalible later in the form of a patch, the Inquisition could and, I feel, should be present in the game, even if only a character in what I hope will be a story-driven single-player campaign. Lets face it, you don't have to be an avid GW fanatic to think that a secret and shadowy organisation of individuals who can technically comendeer every man, woman and child in the Imperium for their covert crusade against aliens, daemons and heretics sounds like a damn kick-arse idea. Certain;t you couldn't fit ALL the facts of the Inquisition into a single game, but then again you don't get all the facts in the books either, or the table-top game either; you're left to draw your own conclusions on a lot of things. As a plot device and possible playable character/unit, I think the Inquisition is flexible and diverse enough to allow it to be interestingly diverse and correct to the background.

But then again, I really really wanna see Inquisitors, so I'm biased lol

Live long and die later - :sniper:

[ankara halla]

I agree with many of your points, but from a practical point of view I´d rather see Inquisitor/s as a plot device to move the story arc along but not nessesearily(sp?) as a unit to be used in the battlefield.
But this really depends on the scale DoW is going to end up.

My concern with the characters is that they may too easily dominate the game like they did in Chaos Gate where you could easily wipe the whole board with a lone Chief Librarian with quickening.

[The Collector]

Special Hero units that are taken every once in a while...like the Col Bishop character (or what was his name?) in Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy. He wore a black coat with a ss-waffen style cap; plus lots of HP.

I'd see Inquisitors/Special Characters present as unique units, for example: "Bring Inquisitor to such-and-such" destination, place, person and so on.

[Jungel_Tim]

Will there be special characters in the editor perhaps? I remember the Age of Empires games and Empire Earth had a lot of heroes in their editors that were not seen in the singelplayer campaign. It would be neat to see Abaddon in action for example. But I guess that will be up to the modding community...?

[dewolfe]

Considering this, I think that an Inquisitor will feature in DoW's single player campaign.

[Chaos-hates-u]

Inquisitors Mybe But Special Characters In Mp No Way U Would Have 4 Abbondons (and Bodygaurd) Vs A Squigoth And The Abbondons Would Win Hands Down It Would'nt B Fair

[Bloodsaint]

Well, there IS a Inquisitor (Deamonhunters and Witchhunters) army list now. Following that line, we could compare it to the DoW space marines like this: (if my memory serves)

Force Commander/Librarian = Inquisitor
Tac Squads = Grey Knight Tact Squads or any Space Marine Chapter or Sisters of Battle
Assault Marines = Storm Troopers? or unchanged or Seraphim
Terminators = Grey Knight Termies
Vehicles all the same...
Scouts = Strorm Troopers

You get the point.

It could easily be done, even it was just a skin.

[Night Haunter]

Your forgeting that the puritan Inquisitors are intolerant of psyskers. Witches!!!

[Lord Dante]

yes but they do recruit them even daemons.

in the new Daemon hunter and whitchy rule book its all in there.

[Night Haunter]

yes but they do recruit them even daemons.

in the new Daemon hunter and whitchy rule book its all in there.

I'm pretty sure those things are all for Radical Inquisitors.

And Grey Knights would never team up with an Inquisitor who had a daemon host. To puritanical.

[Marshall Chris]

puritans are allowed psychic powers, most of them are psykers. The only radical thing in codex daemonhunters is the daemonhost. when you take that along with your inquisitors you cant take grey knights

[Grendel Rose]

Depends on the inquisitor your dealing with really, theirs only a very small fraction of psykers that are actually felt strong enough to be allowed to be in the inquisition in any role, much less Inquisitors, and allot of the Monodominants and Thorians have an almost pthological hatred for all psykers, even if they are sanctioned, and thats completly ignorning the ministoriums witch finders.

Anyhoo the big issue with adding grey Knights is that if you just added them as a special skin or something it wouldn't really fit. I mean they useually only operate in very small groups and really only have two types of heavy weapon. Add to that the fact that they really don't use vehicles much (outside of dedicated landraiders and very rarely a dread) and you'd have issues. Not to mention that you really couldn't represent something like holocaust for their termies. The inquisition and it's ordo militant is just a bit to complex to just place into the game imho.

[Dante]

hasn't the topic of adding mroe units been answered by "one mroe stuff would completely throw the balence issue of and it will be really really hard to balence it again"?

But i wish there were special characters and such... liek inquistitors but only in single player like in age of empires (anyoen remeber that game?) there were tons of random specail characters that appeared in sp and you could use them because they had tons of health and attack power