Dawn of War II

Dawn of War II is the sequel to Dawn of War released on February 19th, 2009. Unlike it's predecessor, it has Tyranids.

It stars Sergeant Avitus, who hates you, Sergeant Tarkus, who is bald, Spike Spiegel (also the Wolverine from Wolverine and the X Men), and a bunch of 'mos. And your Force Commander avatar clearly spends more than the sanctioned amount of time maintaining his hair. Actually, every single fucking space marine officer (with the exception of Tarkus, obviously) in this game does so, resulting in a HAIRESY-ridden gameplay experience. Also features the return of Davian Thule, who tragically lost both his eye and his sexy accent after the fighting on Kronus. Davian Thule can also be called "Davian Cool" in this game.

The game features the Blood Ravens as the only playable campaign faction, and throughout the course of playing they fight Orks, because they’re everywhere, Eldar, who are attempting to slow the Tyranids' progress to their craftworld, and Tyranids. Only three units and your captain may be taken along in any mission, and eventually two sergeants will need to stay home because there are six officers total. There are other drop pods available to carry more men, but it is suspected that Wolverine (or Spike Spiegel) encouraged the rule so that he could remain on board and write bad poetry about the futility of life.

Most of the ridiculous dialogue that started “METAL BOXES” and other memes is now handled typically by Spike Spiegel (who is also Wolverine) and Avitus, who are either very sad or very angry all of the time. At one point, Spike Spiegel spoils victory celebrations by reminding everyone that they’re all going to die some day – he argues the point until everybody agrees and is no longer happy, and then he goes on to say they should save their happiness for when they are dead.

Despite everything written, the dialogue is actually pretty good for a Dawn of War game. Especially when the (relatively, he's around 80) young Assault Sergeant starts reflecting on the melancholy of becoming 'one with the chapter,' you know, if you're into overbearing, melodramatic prattling. Of course, Wolverine (Spike Spiegel) strongly encouraged emotional, cynnical complaining during the monologue. Srsly, Cyrus jumps in to keep the complaints coming in the middle of the monologue.

Also, it was pretty fun to play once through, although repetitive since all the maps are reused two or three times each. There wasn't much point in replaying since you'd have technically already beaten everything twice or more.

Chaos Rising

HAIRESY will be maintained regardless of loyalty!

The expansion is called Chaos Rising and will be released in March 10 2010. In this game, Relic has realized its heinous mistake and has decided to include the Chaos Space Marines and the option to turn your Blood Ravens into Chaos Space Marines.

Featuring a warband of Black Legion Kayoss Spess Mehreens, oh, it seems Eliphas switched allegiances or that it's Word Bearers now, also a bunch of new units(Chaos Dreadnought, awesome Khorne and Nurgle stuff, Genestealer, etc), a corruption meter changed by your actions in game, which determines your Spess Mehreens are chaotic or not, some nice ice planet called Aurelia, and Space Hulk. And according to the developers, no moar missions that are exactly the same. Also! An exciting new character known as Jonah Ossun Orion the Librarian! Who shall become evil and turn to Chaos, as Relic has taught us; niggas and Librarians = evil. It turns out, Jonah is not the daemons, amazingly enough (UNLESS HE IS LOL). Despite being the one with a direct connection to the warp.

Retribution

Another expansion pack coming March 2011, said to re-feature base-building to some degree, multi-faction campaigns and the possible coming of the Inquisition to Aurelia. Characters include Kaptain Bluddflagg, an Ork Pirate guy doing what all Orkz do best, choppin', fightin' killin', lootin', and rockin' a crazy scottish accent while doin' it(0:49 in linked video) but sadly isn't Gorgutz. Other confirmed factions include an Eldar (where you play as an Autarch) and Tyranid campaign where you play as the wait for it....SWARMLORD!!! You play as a Hive Lord, basically a male equivalent of a Norn Queen, for the Tyranid Campaign and the Swarmlord is nothing but a call-in super unit for multiplayer. Sorry. So if you're looking to get your BLAM! on... well, here's your chance. The story is rather clear cut, an Imperial Exterminatus has been declared on the sub-sector for not getting its shit together; many laughs ensue.

Oh and before we forget to say it, Everyone's Favorite Red Shirt Army is back! and they brought Presents!

Trailer link

Characters of Dawn of War II

• Farseer Idranel, she's the incredibly racist Eldar Farseer leading the Eldar on Aurelia. She's more racist than most traditional Eldar and because of this, she spawned the mini-meme "Double Mon-keigh" which is kinda equivalent to Double Nigger.

• Gabriel Angelos, DoW's Gabe. He only becomes more usable in Chaos Rising as a playable character. Will probably return in Retribution, leading the remnants of the loyalist Blood Ravens against Kyras.

• Davian Cool, who makes his return to DoW as a dreadnaught this time around, causing him to easily be an ace in the hole for most missions thereafter. Especially in the expansion, because he can now rip apart enemy vehicles and turn them into health and damage upgrades for the rest of your marines (which mysteriously disappear after your current deployment - he was only using duct tape though). His Alzheimers seems to have improved somewhat, and is capable of speaking more than two sentences before forgetting that he left the iron on back at the chapter keep. He is awesome in-game, capable of killing armies by smacking his fist on the ground resulting in tyranid/ork/eldar/kay-oss spess mehreen giblets for a rather ridiculous distance (the radius is twice as long as he is tall at maximum) and stun everything that is still alive for just a few seconds shorter than the time it takes for this ability to recharge, or he can sweep his assault cannon and instagib everything in a 90 degree angle in front of him, or he can use the multimelta sweep (best leveled up) and melt entire armies (as long as they are at close range) and erase titanic amounts of a boss's health in one go (seriously, I once brought Martellus's tank down to half-health from full in one go with this ability), which makes fucking bullshit bosses like Ulkair and Martellus far more manageable, and he can charge and gib everything in his path and shatter cover, he can also taunt vehicles and walkers on a one and one duel and if he's venerable and wins, grants your entire strike force a fuckhueg bonus, lastly he can shut down and regenerate his health really quickly and if you put enough points into stamina he can still attack in this state. He's totally awesome as a Venerable dreadnought because he'll be killing enemies so frequently that you'll pretty much always have an combat bonus up. Once you get him, you'll wonder how you ever lived without him. He sadly won't be one of your heroes in Retribution, and those of us who relied on him will miss him.

• The Force Commander, who will likely turn to heresy in Chaos Rising (no, not hair-esy, just regular heresy. He's already a hair-etic). Despite being called, 'the youngest Space Marine ever to assume the rank of Force Commander', the Force Commander's voice is provided by the same guy who does Gabe's voice in DoWII. And his voice in the cinematic makes him sound quite old and gruff when compared to Thaddeus. This was likely done because, no one would want to play a teeny bopper voiced Spess Mehreen. EVER. Is also, paradoxically enough, a Guido fuck. Apparently the "best" ending of Chaos Rising never happened, and either the FC or another squad memember other than Cyrus went full traitor. A mysterous "Veteran" who never speaks will take up the 4th hero slot in the Retribution campaign. In other words, frosty the Force Commander killed plenty of heretics and xenos, but fucked up his unit enough to be replaced. A few think he's the Ancient.

• Avitus, who hates balls-of-steel Guardsmen with a passion due to the Kronus campaign. He was also brutalized by them during childhood, never fully accepting that he probably deserved it. He's also probably going to turn to Chaos and become a Khornate Berzerker, eschewing hundreds of years of heavy weapon experience. During the game he expressed anger at everything, including anger at his own chapter for numerous reasons, making statements bordering on treason by the rigid standards of a Space Marine chapter. He's just an angry guy. He frequently asks aliens to show him their fury; or in fuckwit's terms, to get angry at him. He will also very, very frequently say "more corpses" after leaving yet another Xeno/Heretic dead. When he's in terminator armor he has an assault cannon by default, which is awesome, but for whatever reason his squadmates still have stormbolters, but luckily by level 30 their stormbolters will still deal like 1000 damage per shot against freaking tanks, so it's no real loss.

• Spike Spiegal (who is also Wolverine or sometimes even known as Cyrus or Nancy), who will whinge, cry, and generally detest everything and anything that happens as a matter of character and principle. He's trying so hard to be a misunderstood badass. Just so hard, the poor deluded fool - although to his benefit he is hard to understand. It's hard to understand what his fucking problem is, for example. He was probably raped by Tyranids while he was in Deathwatch. Is voiced by the normally hot blooded Steve Blum... What the fuck happened, Steve? In-game however, he's capable of clearing whole maps by himself. WTF.

• Tarkus, who killed a Necron Spyder by shoving a grenade into its head, a clever ploy which led to the loss of his arm (replaced by cybernetics) and half of his face. Apparently he also owns a flame thrower awarded to him by the Salamanders Chapter, resultant of the fact that the Salamanders don't really know what else to give people on any occasion. Unlike Avitus and Cyrus, who could never blend into most known societies today because both struggle desperately to understand more than one human emotion at a time, Tarkus is actually pretty normal for a Space Marine. The guy also has Terminator honors, and if the squads from the first game do turn to Chaos, it's likely he'll be the only one level-headed enough to ask if that's not a stupid decision. "I'll respect your decision, commander, but we should consider that the Chaos Gods basically fuck all their minions in the ass sooner or later, if you'll permit me to speak freely. It's not like we have short life spans and will never regret this, sir." He also has gained Grenade Fu, and can now fuck up large masses of troops with a single throw. He also once trusted an Eldar Ranger and got his whole squad killed, which gave him hatred against the spehss elves that only the Ordo Xenos could rival.

• Eliphas, he's in the expansion, and as a mini-boss no less. Gets his shit ruined by Abaddon. Unfortunately, it has become official, Eliphas leads the Black Legion forces in Retribution, and for some reason has stole Araghast's armor. FUCK YOU, ABBADDON. Oh, why can't he at least have a helmet? The helmet was the best part of the armor. If I had to hazard a guess, he's likely going to gravitate towards Khorne. As all of these characters are derivative of the multipllayer heroes, and the Chaos Termy Lord was a hardass Khorne nut.

• Scott McNeil. SCOTT MCNEIL! MIGHTY IS HE!!!

• Thaddeus, who is supposedly an ex hive gangster. This is almost impossible to believe for a number of reasons. One is that Thaddeus is probably the most hair-etical member of the bunch, especially considering how he manages to make that shit stay despite flying around with a jet pack all day. Two is that he's the one who decides to start whining in the middle of the game about how emotionally jarring it is to become a Space Marine (which Cyrus aggresively approved of). I'm pretty sure gangsters rape you for that nonsense. Though it's difficult to tell due to the lighting in his talking head's box, he has blond hair; and as we all know, all blond men are evil.

• Gordian. The Apothecary. Aside from Tarkus, the only other character in this game who's dialog does not strictly adhere to only one human emotion. Also called out Cyrus on his pessimistic bullshit.

• Martellus the Techmarine, some lazy fuckwit on board a strike cruiser who's sole job it is to tell you bad news. May Is secretly Spike Spiegal. Also he died. And then he got better. When he becomes a heretic (Don't kid yourselves, he's wearing a helmet and Relic likes to make the "happiest" endings canon) he drives a god damned tank that does fucking retarded amounts of damage and takes fucking forever to kill. In an actual plot TWEEST, Martellus is CONFIRMED in Retribution as being a Blood Raven loyalist along with Cyrus and Diomedes.

• Governor Vandis. The planetary Governor of Meridian and the most useless character in Dawn of War 2. Instead of helping the player, he just got high in his pleasure palace while two strippers sucked his dingy. Then in Chaos rising he committed heresy and joined up with the Black Legion and attacked the newly promoted Governor Derosa's holdings in hope of regaining leadership. He lost.

• Derosa. She was the second most useless character for being such a dumbass bitch that watches jersey shore with her girlfriend. Pretty hot however.

New characters of Chaos Rising

• Apothecary Galan. He found Kyras on the space hulk Judgement of Carrion a long time ago, and was corrupted by Chaos after spending too much time on the wreckage. Once you infiltrate Captain Diomedes's base you have the choice to kill him and his terminator veteran bodyguards, who are also heretics. If you do, he'll be back to his old self and tell you that Kyras is evil and stuff, and you can then blow up Diomedes's base and not have to kill him.

• Abaddon. Because destroying a dangerously depleted Space Marine chapter fighting a civil war with itself is just the sort of victory he needs to win back his 'street cred'. Bwahaha, just kidding. He'll still lose.

• Ulkair the Great Unclean One. Famous for having way, way, way too many fucking hit points and doing absolutely stupid amounts of damage in one hit. Fuck the Avatar of Khaine and Warboss Bonesmasha, this lardass is the true pain in the ass of a boss.

• Araghast the Pillager. The Chaos lord of the Black Legion. He is shown as being less retarded than the previous ones (except for Eliphas). Later betrayed by Eliphas cuz Eliphas doesn't take orders from anyone. However, Araghast is an enormously powerful unit in actual gameplay terms and rather fun to be around, regardless. His 'character class'. a Chaos Lord is perhaps the best hero unit in the game due to his strong damage, complete immunity to suppression fire early on in the game, his ability to reduce enemy range to almost nil, and his ability to reduce enemy squad damage by a sizable margin every time he kills a unit. He is clearly the hero of Chaos Rising and the mere idea that he loses to some effete snob with an arrogant and unpleasant fanbase makes the game moar tragic than Hamlet and Othello put together. He is also a devotee of Khorne and unlike Crull, totally awesome. He is also a master of the art of insult, as is evident by his creative and awesome taunting of the Blood Ravens on the mission where they kill him. He lost mostly because Eliphas is a dick. Also because his strategy revolved around portals, and not Defilers.

Characters of Dawn of War: Retribution

Contender for manliest IG commander yet?

Multiple covers: Collect them all!

Blood Ravens:

• Captain Diomedes of the 1st Company: Diomedes is a helmet wearing jerkass, but damn if he isn't awesome (he's a 1st Company Veteran afterall). At first, he kill steals the sorcerer you were sent to eliminate with gusto, then tells you and Gabriel to stand down and get the fuck out of the sector. As a result, Angelos sends you to Calderis to blow up his base. If you kill Galan, you don't have to kill him and he will realize that Kyras is a heretic and joins Angelos's side. This would mean that the 1st, 3rd, and 4th companies would be on Angelos's side, and since the blood ravens are only at half strength, poor old Kyras will only have 200 marines to his name, which would mean that he'd be majorly screwed. He has a pimping white helmet and gold trimmed pauldrons. His star is also on the rise since he's been confirmed as the new Blood Raven's Force Commander for Retribution.
• Spike Spiegel - Spike Spiegel has once again returned to try to become a misunderstood badass (again). Out of all his fellow squadmates, Relic just HAD to put Cyrus back in because he's apperantly the "cool bad-ass" even though he spends most of his time whinging about how fucked up the world is.
• Martellus - Techmarine Martellus, another branded renegade who has also secretly joined Diomedes, is a steady voice of reason in the unfolding campaign.
• The Ancient - He does not speak, having taken a vow of silence to atone for past sins, but his actions speak volumes on the battlefield. Some suspect he is Boreale. But that's impossible because we all know that Boreale got fucked by the imperial guard back in Kaurava... right? Some believe him to be Tarkus. Hell he could even be the Force Commander, or Thaddeus, or Avitus (unlikely, since Avitus is too goddamn angry to take a vow of silence.)

Orks:

• Kaptin Bluddflag, the Ork warboss leading the Waaagh on Aurelia, awesome with a capital A since he's wearing a god damned pirate hat with an bionic eyepatch, he sadly isn't Gorgutz, so many a veteran dawn of war fan were very disappointed upon hearing the news.
• Mister Nailbrain - Mekboy and Kaptin Bluddflagg’s First Mate.
• Spookums - The Kaptin’s Kommando Nob.
• Brikkfist - A Storm Nob that has joined with the Freebooters.

Imperial Guard

• Inquisitor Adrastia. The female Inquisitor of Ordo Malleus assigned to purge/investigate the Aurelian sub sector of xenos, heretics, and mutants. She has artificer armor and a pimp hat. Likes: EXTERMINATUS, The Emprah, Burning Heretics. Dislikes: Everything else.
• Lord General Castor. A limey looking Imperial General fighting to survive in a war with the darkest powah. He may have been a relative of General Melchet in a past life. He is the leader of the Imperial Guard units investigating Aurelia's extermination. His personality is that of a cocksure, gentlemanly big game hunter. This is awesome. As a leader, he hates guardsmen who are pussies and have lost their regulation issue steel balls. He can also fire the 40k version of a 50. cal sniper rifle one handed like a pistol while at the same time wielding a power sword.
• LORD Commissar Bernn. (Not putting LORD in capital letters is heresy) No details as of yet, but given that Commissars = blam, LORD Commissars will = HEUG BLAMMING!
• Sergeant Merrick. Technically not a new character, but Retribution is the first time he's is playable. Merrick is such a badass he blasted through a suicide mission to destroy a tyranid hive fleet, the return of Ulkair AND the ten years of non-stop war in-between. Plays similar to Tarkus. Made Avitus choke on his bitching about the Imperial Guard.

Eldar:

• Autarch Kayleth, the Eldar commander which the player assumes in Retribution.
• Ronahn - A former Pathfinder of Ulthwe, but he has renounced his ties to the Seer-led craftworld and now wanders the stars.
• Veldoran - An aged and experienced Warlock accompanying Kayleth on her mission.
• Elenwe - A Farseer, a master of prediction, helping to guide Kayleth on her mission.

Tyranids:

• The Hive Lord - Not the swarmlord as originally thought (he's busy in the Octarius sector any way), but simply the much smaller male version of a Norn Queen/Dominatrix. He will be the only Hero for the Tyranids since their campaign will have a completely different play-style, being more like an actual RTS campaign than the Tactical Role Playing games that all the other campaigns in Dawn of War II and it's expansions have been. He's trying to lead the tyranids to resume contact with the Hive Fleet in deep spehss, but something is interfering with telepathic communication to the fleet and the Hive Lord will solve that problem in the only way that works in Warhammer ever works; with lots and lots of violence.
• The Hive Mind - No longer simply just a woman's voice with a bit of an echo, the Hive Mind's voice has been reworked into a much more gravelly and masculine tone (as well as being mildly creepier and more capable of expressing emotion). The Hive Mind essentially plays the role that Gabriel Angelos did in the Dawn of War II and Chaos rising campaigns, giving you plot exposition and commands. The other half of the plot exposition will come from intercepted communications from your enemies in response or anticipation to your actions.

Chaos:

• Lord Eliphas, for some reason, returns now clad in Terminator Amour and leads the Black legion War-band probably because Abaddon wants to make more of a fail out of him (And possibly after torturing him and inflicting unimaginable pain for 10 years) cuzz he's definitely gonna get his miserable ass kicked....again. Anyway, Eliphas, after his defeat, promised Abaddon the souls of every blood raven.
• Neroth, Chaos Sorcerer devoted to Tzeentch. He is an agent of Abaddon sent to make sure that Eliphas fulfills his promise. Eliphas is definitely gonna get Sindri'd by him, cuz we all know what happened to Bale and Araghast. ARAGHAST SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THIS EXPANSION GODDAMNIT!!!
• Kain, Chaos Champion. HE LIVES IN DEATH!
• Varius, Plague Champion. Take out the 'a' and place the 'i' second and it will turn out that his name is an anagram for "Virus", which pretty much suits him. Also ugly as fuck but that unsurprising considering he's a follower of Papa Nurgle.

Others

• Azariah Kyras,Corrupted Chapter Master of the Blood Ravens recently confirmed to appear in retribution.