Dawn of War 4's Combat Director Makes RTS Battles Feel Cinematic – And That's a Big Deal

Dawn of War 4's combat director isn't just another RTS tweak—it's a full-on animation arms race.

The system expands on the original game's sync-kill animations by introducing power-level matching. As Derksen explains:

"Most people know the sync-kill system from all the way back from Dawn of War 1, but what we did is we tried to expand on that and instead have synced combat really."

Units like terminators and gretchins now have animations that scale with their relative power.

A 3.23-minute work-in-progress clip shows orks swarming a dreadnought with coordinated throws, stomps, and axe-hacking animations that emphasize the "feeling of ownership" over individual units.

The game is targeting a 2026 release with a Steam page already live for updates. Closed alpha tests have been conducted, but the combat director's 3.23-minute showcase remains the most concrete proof-of-concept to date.