relic-entertainment posts

Direct2Drive's 24 Days of Christmas promotion is still going on and while the last two days were a little bit on the lame side in terms of deals, that's not the case for Sunday. From now until 1 pm Eastern time on Sunday you will be able to get a very nice price if you purchase and download Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor.

Yep, Relic Entertainment's latest stand alone expansion pack for their hit WWII strategy game is next on the Direct2Drive hit list. The one day price is just $7.50 for the game. That's compared to its normal price of $29.95. If you want it you better act soon as another game takes its place tomorrow.

It's a mysterious world out there. You may think you have a handle on what's going on, but the truth is that there are things going on just outside your normal life. What is going on in the world and how would you deal with it? That seems to be the premise of the back story that game developer Smoking Gun Interactive is creating for its debut game (which at the moment does not have a title).

Smoking Gun was formed in Vancouver by many former members of Relic Entertainment and has already raised over $6 million in funding to develop its first game. But well before that title is released, the company is laying the groundwork with an online comic that has links to interactive browser-based mini-games. Big Download got a chance to ask Smoking Sun's co-founder John Johnson about their plans for the game and their unique approach to storytelling. By the way, although Johnson does refer to the game as a console title in the interview he told us that they would develop it as a PC game if their eventual publisher gives them the go-ahead.

You can add one more game to the massive list of PC titles due out in the first quarter of 2010. This time it's for Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising. Thanks to a post in the game's official Facebook site, we now know that the stand alone expansion pack to the sci-fi RTS game from developer Relic and publisher THQ is due for release on March 11 in the US. Europeans get the expansion pack one day later on March 12.

That means that sci-fi RTS fans have yet another major release coming this March with Supreme Commander 2 due out on March 2 and Command and Conquer 4 set to ship on March 16. Will one or more of these games blink and be delayed to move out of the way of the competition?

[Via Relic News]

Last June during E3, THQ announced that their internal developer Relic Entertainment would be developing a third person action game called Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. So why didn't we report on this news at Big Download? Because the game was announced for the Xbox 360 and PS3, not for the PC. However, Relic has made some statements that indicate that they might be open to porting the game to the PC.

A web petition to have the game come to the PC has already been set up but currently it has just over 1,000 "signatures". However the hardware web site bit-tech.net got a Relic spokesperson to state, "If we continue to see a strong desire for a PC version of Space Marine, who knows what might happen!" So do you want such a game coming to our platform? If so perhaps more people participating in the petition could cause Relic to change their minds.

As announced earlier this week the big free update for Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II is now live and can be downloaded via Steam. Once again this update to Relic's sci-fi RTS game adds The Last Stand gameplay mode where a three-player team has to go up against wave after wave of increasingly more enemies that are more difficult to defeat.

In addition to the new mode there are two new multiplayer maps in this update (the 2 player map Quest's Heresy and the four player map Hydris Chasm). There are also numerous unit changes and balance issued addressed in the update along with lots of but fixes.

10 years ago this week, Relic Entertainment released their first game title, the revolutionary 3D space-based RTS game Homeworld. The game was a huge hit, both in sales as well as critically and the game got a number of "Game of the Year" awards from a number of media outlets. This week the official Relic web site is looking back at the game's 10th anniversary by chatting with two current Relic employees who worked on the original game.

Principal Designer Quinn Duffy and Senior Artist Dave Cheong talk about their memories of helping to make the first Homeworld game (a sequel was released in 2003). Duffy states, "We created a visually sophisticated universe with a great deal of implied depth, crafted an evocative story and told it well, and had a pretty fun and immersive game on top of it all." And what about the rumors of a new Homeworld game in the works? Duffy points out that very few of Relic's current team worked on the first game and says, "Personally, I'd love to see another Homeworld game – I'd love to see the universe breath again, but only if it were done with the same passion and drive of the original."

In related news, fan site Relic News have posted up an article on how to play the original game in online multiplayer modes using the GameRanger matchmaking service.

Normally we don't post much in the way of concept artwork but we just had to show you this bit of just freakin' awesome work from the upcoming and just announced Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II Chaos Rising. Wow. You would think having high tech weapons would be cool enough but the Chaos Marines have devil dogs. Kind of an overkill but we love it.

Along with the above concept artwork, developer Relic and publisher THQ set over the first screenshots from the stand alone RTS expansion. They look pretty good too but we want to see devil dogs now. And massive axes too.

As previously hinted, developer Relic and publisher THQ have just announced plans for Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II - Chaos Rising. It's the first stand alone expansion to the sci-fi RTS game that was released last February. The new game is due out in spring 2010 and will introduce the Chaos Space Marines as the new playable side in the series.

Chaos Rising will continue the storyline in the original Dawn of War II and you can even use your squad's items, experience points and more to fight the Chaos Marines in the new single player campaign. The level cap has also been raised from 20 to 30 and there will be new multiplayer maps and new units for the three playable sides in the first Dawn of War II game.

Relic Entertainment has been generous with free updates to their sci-fi RTS game Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II. But are they prepping a full fledged commercial expansion? Relic News seems to think so. The long time fan site of all things Relic have been sent some interesting packages from publisher THQ.

The package contain a Games Workshop minature of a Chaos Space Marine, a big hint that Relic plans to introduce them into the game at some point. The package, as you can see above, has "MMX" on it which is likely not a reference to Intel's old MMX processor but the year "2010", a possible hint as to a release date.

Earlier this week the first details were revealed about The Last Stand, an upcoming downloadable content expansion for Relic's RTS game Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II. While the DLC will be all about three players fighting off waves of enemies in combat, that's apparently not everything the download will have.

According to the Steam web site, The Last Stand will add another two multiplayer maps to the game's already extensive collection along with other bug fixes and gameplay balance changes. The download is scheduled for release sometime in October and will be a free download. There's no word yet if a beta release for The Last Stand is planned.