Not only have
Relic released a teaser trailer for Retribution's Tyranid campaign, but Jeff Lydell has sat down with
GameSpot for an interview to offer additional details on how that's going to work.
The Q&A reveals that in the Tyranid campaign, players will take control of a Hive Tyrant, receiving orders from the Hive Mind and psychically intercepting transmissions from enemies. The Tyranids need to reunite with the main fleet of the Tendril, but they can't reform the synaptic link due to something in the sector preventing them from doing so. The goal is to rectify that issue, but of course this is a
Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War campaign, so the Tyranids will find themselves entangled in a much larger conflict than a "simple" synapse link disruption suggests.
That addresses a little bit at least the question of how a Tyranid storyline would go down... but how in the world do
Relic plan to have the campaign gameplay work? If Orks were unlikely candidates for a
Dawn of War 2 campaign because of how different they are as a race compared to Space Marines, Tyranids are even less likely candidates. Lydell addressed these concerns, revealing that Tyranid players will only have one RPG-style hero, the Hive Tyrant. This keeps with Tyranid lore, and ensures the majority of Tyranid units are disposable. Undoubtedly, this will please most
Warhammer 40,000 fans, and likely reinvigorate hope that
Relic will use the singleplayer campaign to provide a "real" Tyranid experience (something many find lacking in multiplayer because of the game's emphasis on unit preservation).
In the course of the interview, Lydell revealed that Tyranids will be getting a new unit that appears in the campaign and in multiplayer. Lydell did not identify the unit, and the trailer did not highlight it, but it seems both the released trailer and screenshots reveal it. We
mentioned it in our previous article on the Tyranid reveal, but now we have screenshots to supplement the video still. The screenshots, seen above, clearly depict a new Tyranid unit with four Boneswords or Bone Sabres. That sounds exactly like
the Swarmlord- just check the image comparison below. How
Relic are going to fit such a unique and effective unit into
Dawn of War 2 definitely remains to be seen, and we'll stay on top of that.
Lydell also got into the status of
Retribution's development.
Relic is finishing-up with the last few features before they move into bug-fixing and polishing. Lydell further cemented his confidence in the new campaigns, and
Relic's job in providing each with a strong storyline. He definitely gives a lot of confidence that
Relic are really working to ensure that the quality of all the campaigns are top-notch even though there are multiple campaigns. Lydell finished-up by dropping some hints of what remains to be revealed about
Retribution:
For the campaign, I'll add that the Tyranids aren't the last race we plan on announcing, and for
Retribution, I'll add you can expect new content and new features to be announced in the coming months.
Source: Jeff Lydell More Information: