Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 creative director explains how core 40K tabletop features like ‘Armor of Contempt’ were adapted to the RTS — ‘It’s not the same mechanic, but it does kind of the same t

• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 creative director Jan Theysen explains how King Art introduced ideas from the Warhammer 40K TTRPG
• Theysen says it took "basic ideas" from the tabletop game that were familiar to fans
• Features like Armor of Contempt were also adapted to make sense for the real-time strategy experience

King Art Games co-founder and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 creative director Jan Theysen has explained how the studio implemented ideas from the Warhammer 40K tabletop game to make sense for long-time fans and newcomers.

In a lengthy interview with TechRadar Gaming, where Theysen described how the game manifests the classic RTS experience of the 2004 game and which hero mechanics and UI features it borrowed from Dawn of War 2 and 3, the creative director said that it was always King Art's intention to take inspiration from the beloved tabletop game.

"When it comes to basic ideas for factions, or also for units, for abilities, and so on, that's basically the first place we look," Theysen said. "Because instead of inventing completely new abilities for units, it makes sense to see what they have in the tabletop; is this something that we can adapt or change so it works in an RTS?"

Among those features was Armor of Contempt, a combat bonus for the Space Marine faction, which King Art decided to adapt to make sense in the context of the RTS.

"The tabletop is something different, but it's kind of the same idea, which basically means it makes Space Marines harder to kill, right?" the creative director explained.

"In the RTS, we now have Armor of Contempt, which basically works when Space Marines kill enemies, but also if one of them gets killed, there is more contempt [the attribute], and then basically the next damage you receive goes away from the contempt instead of the HP pool, which makes the Space Marine harder to kill, right?"

He added, "It's not the same mechanic, but it does kind of the same thing. And by naming it Armor of Contempt, someone who knows the tabletop already gets a good impression of what it probably does."

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 launches on PC on December 3. The creative director has also suggested that the game could eventually come to console.