Every Dawn of War game has been a bold stylistic departure from the last, so it’s nice that Dawn of War 4 is looking like a buffet table stocked with all the best ideas from the series’ history. A new interview dropped at today’s PC Gaming Show Tokyo Direct, giving the inside scoop of how it all plays out on the battlefield.

“In the end we said, ‘no, let’s really go with Dawn of War 1, that’s our guiding star,’” says creative director Jan Theysen; that’s the game that influenced this sequel the most.

Everyone on the team said what they loved most about that first game was the “sync kills.” Essentially, when enemy units faced off against each other, they’d actually fight and you’d see individual soldiers being defeated after being hit, rather than just randomly dropping dead.

“We wanted to double down and push forward on sync kills,” explains Elliott Verbiest, senior game designer. “So not only just having synchronized animations between units killing each other, but also synchronized melee combat through our combat director system.”

But, as with any sequel, the challenge is “you’re not trying to recreate the old game, you try to recreate the feeling people had,” says Theysen.

So, base-building and large-scale armies are back, as well as factions like the Blood Ravens and the Orcs.

If you wanted this kind of scale before, you needed the aid of mods or to play Dawn of War 3. But even without the towering mechs, there is a generous number of squads and buildings on screen in some of these firefights, which should put to bed any concerns the action will be stripped down.

With four campaigns playable in co-op, the return of Last Stand, and three varieties of skirmish, there should be plenty to tear into when Dawn of War 4 finally gets a release date one of these days. In the meantime, you can wishlist the game on Steam.

Check out every game, trailer, and announcement in the PC Gaming Show Tokyo Direct.

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