I know everybody is saying that, including Relic, but it really reminds me of the original. Take a look. Winter Assault. Dark Crusade. Soulstorm. It is the use of colour. They're all strong colours with a touch of grime. And I see the same thing in D0W III.
The old was alot grittier tho. Also it was made in early 2000's so graphics wernt going to be top knotch. Also dow 3 seems to have forgone the cover system, which is a huge shame
The art style is similar to DoW 2, so I personnally have no problem with it. I prefer DoW 2 over 1 tbh. Animation is top-knotch as usual, Relic inarguably has one of the best animation team in the RTS genre.
I am 90% of the way through a Tau play through of Soul Storm right now. At a certain point, I just started using the honor guard troops to quick cap a few points, pumped out as many fire warriors and baraccuda's as I could and A clicked my way around the map. Then I had the most fun when I started with an Honor guard large enough to assault the "big bases" and tried to take those without having to use extra recruited resources (it never worked, but it was still fun). Now, I would have loved a combination of the Total War Larger "world" map with more of DoW type 2 combat. It would feel more like a game of 40k, as you would build your army with the troops you wanted before the battle (Based on whatever your Chapter Master or Company level Commander rates in terms of troops for that campaign), deploy them in strategic ways and, and the focus on each encounter would be the movement of troops and actual combat instead of base management. (I think dug in troops should be able to erect defenses prior to the battle but thats an entirely different thing there). So you would have a system wide map, and then you could elect to attack certain worlds in that system, working your way through the worlds until all the major objectives are achieved (whatever those may be). Or maybe just a single world has the Major Objectives for a campaign. I dunno. This would be a pretty simple system for folks to set up their own campaigns to follow along, with something like the steam workshop, too. And then you could take your Chapter (or Company, or Warband, or ...) from one campaign to the next earning experience and honors and gifts from the warp or whatever you're into.
They did that because half the armies either couldn't use it properly or had no reason to use it. While I agree that the new system is kinda silly looking, I would rather have it than the DoW2 cover sytem of herding cats until you give up and just make everyone a gunner and move them forward while focus firing things.
My only real complaint so far is with Gabriel Angelos. For some reason he became Arthas from Warcraft 3 bouncing around with that hammer and cape. The 30 ft leap is over the top. And also the voice actor doesn't resemble the original one at all. I wish they would have just killed off Gabe instead of this heresy.
I really liked what I saw in the footage. Aside from Angelos' animations (too exaggerated, and that seems to be a general consensus), and maybe toning down some particle/lightning effects, everything else looks awesome. The art style reminds me of both DoW2 and the TT; they can still make it grittier with a few new layers in the textures. There seems to be destructible terrain, and I'd say that wasn't the biggest battle one could see in DoW3...
