Dawn of War: Winter Assault Q&A

What is your name and your role at Relic

My name is Jonny Ebbert. I'm a senior designer at Relic. I was in charge of designing the new Imperial Guard race, designing the tech trees, and multiplay balance.

Do you have an plans for further games in the Warhammer 40K universe? Perhaps even another Dawn of War expansion?

The possibility certainly exists. Outside of that I can't say much ;)

How much time and effort goes into getting the balance between the races right?

The answer is always "more".

Every moment I could spend away from more urgent tasks was a moment spent on play balance.

How difficult is it creating a game in a universe that has such a large and entrenched fan base and what sort of constraints does that add to the creative process?

Not difficult at all. A little confinement, as they say, can be very liberating. The Warhammer 40k Universe is so rich and detailed that it made story creation very easy. Games Workshop was a very gracious partner, and gave us a lot of freedom to add new details and history to their universe.

There's been a lot of game to movie cross overs recently, how would you feel about one of your titles being next?

That would depend entirely on the production values. If the film was directed by Brian Singer (Xmen) or Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins), then I'd be ecstatic. If the film was done by the crew that's bringing us Doom: The Movie, then I'd have to hope that there really is no such thing as "bad" publicity.

Now Winter Assault is done, you might have some more free time, do you spend much of that time playing games?

Way more than I should, most likely.

I'd like to thank Jonny (that's the man himself on the left) very much for his time. Dawn of War: Winter Assault is out today, the 23rd of September. While I haven't finished our review just yet, I can tell you that it's just as good as the first game and that's high praise indeed.