For the first time ever, a Primarch is playable in a Warhammer 40,000 video game. Lion El'Jonson — aka The Lion — is playable in upcoming real-time strategy game Dawn of War 4. It’s a hugely exciting prospect for fans of the setting, who have so far had to imagine what it would be like to play as a Primarch in a video game. Now, we’ll get to control The Lion himself, the reborn leader of the Dark Angels chapter of Space Marines, as he presumably swats away all before him with the Emperor’s Shield and Fealty.
But how did developer King Art Games convince Games Workshop to let them do what no other developer has done before? And how did it approach making the seriously overpowered Lion El'Jonson work in Dawn of War 4? What does his inclusion mean for Dawn of War 4’s potential canon status within the setting? And will we get to see his face?
I sat down with director Jan Theysen to ask these questions and many more. We get into some serious detail about The Lion, the Dark Angels, and where we’re at in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, so sit down, relax, and trust in the Emperor.
IGN: I think the first obvious question is why did you choose the Dark Angels as the second playable faction for the Space Marines?
Jan Theysen: When we talked about, okay, what are the factions we want in the game, it's obvious that you need the Blood Ravens, right? It's a Dawn of War. And we talked about the other factions and then at some point it came up, okay, why just have the Blood Ravens? Maybe there is an option to also have another faction or another chapter. And basically Games Workshop said, ‘Hey, why not Dark Angels, could be a cool pick?’ And we said, ‘Oh, okay, of course, why not? Cool pick.’ And then they said, ‘Okay, what about… do you want Lion El'Jonson?’ And we were like, ‘Oh, okay, cool idea.’ That's basically it.
IGN: So Games Workshop suggested Dark Angels to you guys?
Jan Theysen: Yeah, basically they said, ‘Hey, just because it's a Dawn of War doesn't mean that it can be only Blood Ravens, right? There could be other Space Marines in there as well. And this was basically, okay then let's talk about it. What are the options and what could be a cool addition? And we took it from there.
IGN: There'll be a system where you'll be able to choose between playing as the Blood Ravens and the Dark Angels and you pick the missions you want to play. How will that work?
Jan Theysen: As you might know, we have four different campaigns in the game and for all of the campaigns we try to figure out something that gives the players some choices or some things they can do and influence in the campaign. And so for example, in the Ork campaign, you can literally pick, okay, do you want to play these Orks or these Orks and they're fighting each other. And so that's a very clear distinction.
For the Space Marines, of course that doesn’t make sense, right? They're not really different goals or anything, they're not fighting each other, but they're working on the same thing. And so we basically said, okay, what we can do is we can offer different gameplay experiences based on the factions, because story-wise, the Dark Angels, they have all the toys and all the power and they can basically do the big battles and the epic conflicts, while the Blood Ravens are… they have bigger problems and they need to rely on smaller operations, behind enemy lines, a little bit more covert operations maybe.
And so basically how this works is we have this Space Marine campaign story and there are different things happening at the same time. The Blood Ravens and the Dark Angels, sometimes they are at the same place at the same time and then you can play both of them. But other times it's like, okay, Dark Angels do this now, Blood Ravens do this now, who do we want to play? And then you can basically pick, hey, I want the big all out war battle or I want to play this more tactical thing maybe with the Blood Ravens. And then you can pick and then at some point they meet again, or the things converge again.
IGN: So you don’t change the story outcome?
Jan Theysen: The story remains the same, but the question is which parts of the story you encounter or you play with because the other stuff still happens, but then you only hear from it if you're not a part of it.
IGN: Do the Dark Angels have different units at their disposal? Are the gameplay mechanics different?
Jan Theysen: In general it's all Space Marines, right? The faction is Space Marines, but storywise in the campaign, the Blood Ravens don't have access to all the toys and to the big armies and so on. So their missions will be more infantry heavy and also a little bit smaller. And there is even here and there something that is more in the stealth or something that leads you to play a little bit more careful maybe, while the Dark Angles is more like okay, the big battles.
But they have the same units in multiplayer. In multiplayer for example, if you play the Blood Ravens, you have all the same toys because that's a separate thing. Where they differ is with the heroes. So both of the factions have two playable heroes, except for Lion El'Jonson, who is in the campaign but not really like a playable hero. So they both have two. And that of course leads to different things you can do, but also a little bit different playstyles maybe. So depending on the hero you pick, if you really are into slow progress and powerful defensive units, then you might pick the Terminator captain. And if you are more about quick stealthy stuff, you might pick Cyrus. There they can differ a little bit in terms of gameplay.
IGN: Let's talk about The Lion. We've never had a playable Primarch in a Warhammer 40,000 video game before. Why are you allowed to do this when no other developer has been allowed to do this? How did this come about?
Jan Theysen: When we talked about the Darker Angels we talked about options, what can we do? And this came up, and it was like, we were just basically asking is that an option or not? Just because let's make sure that we talked about everything. And they said, well yeah, maybe? Tell us what you would like to do with him and then we can tell you if this is an option or not. He's just so off the curve in terms of power level that of course you can't really have him as a normal unit in the game or something you can use in multiplayer or something like that. And so we basically said, okay, we don't want to make this all about The Lion and the whole campaign revolves around him or something, because he is again, so off the curve for that, it wouldn't really… I mean, how can we represent him in a correct way that doesn't mess up your whole game and balancing and everything? And so we basically said, okay, it would be really fun, it would be really cool to have him in the game, and it's a big honor to have him here, but let's just have it as a guest appearance. And so in the game there are two cutscenes and one mission where the Lion plays a role, and you can play him and he is fun and he is off the charts, but he is not available for the rest of the game because he’s just too powerful.
IGN: So you came up with a way this would work and convinced Games Workshop?
Jan Theysen: I mean I don't think we really had to convince them in terms of, they didn't want to do it or something. It was more like, okay, it obviously would be a cool thing for players to have it in the game, but let's make sure we get it right. And so if we have the Lion in the game, okay, how would he play? What happens? Is he one-shotting everything and how is this interesting? And so we came up with this idea that — without spoiling anything — it's basically the Dark Angels and the Blood Ravens did everything they could to stop the bad thing from happening, and then at the very end there is just something they can't overcome. And that is a big entrance for the Lion.
IGN: The power sets of the Primarchs are one of the most debated aspects of 40K lore. Fans love pitting the Primarchs against each other and speculating about who would win in a fight. Part of what you're doing here is unmasking a Primarch in a way, and revealing how that might work in a way that we've never seen before. We’re finally getting to see their power set in action.
Jan Theysen: In an RTS you try to give all the units that are in the game a certain character that fits the description and that works in terms of lore. But on the other hand, it's also of course an RTS game and you have to make sure that it's balanced, and that the players can understand actually, for example, what is this unit good against? And that is of course a problem if all the units are good against everything. We dealt with that for the whole production to basically figure out how can we make sure that all the factions feel authentic and the units feel authentic and so on.
For The Lion, it's a little bit of a special case because it's like the last mission in the game and it's more about, okay, let's have a cool cinematic thing going on here and then it's about having fun with a Primarch, and we didn't really care about if this is balanced or this is something that you can actually could theoretically do in multiplayer, something like that. Who cares, right? This is just to have fun. And if we would ever put Lion El'Jonson in any other mode, he could definitely not be the same unit that he is in the campaign.
