Interview by: William Abner

With Chaos Rising ready to drop on Thursday we caught up with Relic’s Lead Designer Daniel Kading to get some last minute info on what we can expect to see out of this new expansion.

Before getting into the expansion, did Relic accomplish what it set out to do with Dawn of War II? It seems as if after the initial shock of the design changes from the original that the fan base accepted it with (mostly) open arms.

I feel we were partially successful, because there was that much more we wanted to do (and got to do) in Chaos Rising. We set out to make a game that crossed genres and had that much more appeal to that many more players, and we were successful with that- we kindled a lot of attachment to our characters, the intimate level of play, and the customization. We are very fortunate to have gotten to make Chaos Rising, where we got to really refine those systems into their proper forms.

The expansion obviously focuses on Chaos. Can you explain a bit how the “corruption” idea works in Chaos Rising? When we previewed the game last month we touched on this briefly – but can your units succumb to the lure of Chaos? How does that work?

Chaos is the moustache-twirling, goatee-having dark side that the Space Marines can turn to if they stray from their ideals. Most of the Space Marines you control have a Corruption Meter that starts out at "pure". They receive unique benefits and abilities while pure, but there's a huge variety of choices and challenges throughout the campaign which can move their corruption total- optional objectives that can corrupt or purify, powerful wargear that adds corruption, even MORE powerful wargear that REQUIRES corruption, global abilities with powerful effects which also taint everybody who is deployed.

Certain missions will be of extreme importance to certain squads- for example, Avitus, your heavy weapon specialist, has never exactly been known for his level-headed demeanor and diplomatic talents. So when a mission occurs where the enemies declare you to be cowards and literally dare you to face them, Avitus demands that he be allowed to answer the challenge. Refusing this sort of request will cause a substantial amount of corruption.

Becoming corrupt unlocks even more powers for your characters, and major story elements are ultimately determined by how corrupt your various squads are. There are multiple endings- though I should point out that corruption doesn't necessarily mean you'll get a "bad" ending. If you're playing your squads as rampaging murderers, then you'll actually probably be quite happy with how things pan out.