Dawn of War is one of the oldest games in the Warhammer 40,000 franchise and to this day it has the highest rating on Steam. In August 2025, it will receive a long-awaited remaster, and exactly one month earlier, the original trailer will be re-released – with one difference that drives fans crazy.
What kind of game is this?
- Dawn of War was released in 2004 and was developed by Relic Entertainment (Company of Heroes, Age of Empires 4). It is still considered one of the best strategy games on Steam.
- In the classic real-time strategy style, Dawn of War is divided into base building and resource management (“macro”) and battles (“micro”).
- In May, the creators announced that Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is getting a remaster after more than 20 years, something that fans have been waiting for ages.
What’s new now: On July 12, 2025, a new trailer was released. With it, the release date for the Definitive Edition was revealed: August 14, 2025. Essentially, this is the old trailer from 2004 with a shinier look, everything else is the same – with one exception.
About 40 seconds in, a Captain of the Space Marines gives a command to attack. In the original, he simply screams guttural and storms into battle. In the new version, he calls his brothers to attack, and that does not sit well with die-hard fans.
On YouTube, there are dozens of comments that criticize the missing scream. Something that most (including myself) probably wouldn’t have even noticed. Some go so far as to say that the entire trailer has been ruined because of it. IGN asked the developers about it and they say:
We decided to replace the scream because the original audio track was very distorted and this was noticeable compared to other refinements of the improved trailer. Nevertheless, we heard the feedback from the fans – the scream was more popular than we thought! And who knows, maybe we have something for the OG scream lovers coming soon.
The criticism of the missing scream is likely meant to be humorous, as the trailer is still receiving several thousand upvotes and has favorable comments – even from disappointed scream fans.
Dawn of War is the best game for Warhammer 40,000 on Steam
In recent years, a plethora of games set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe has been released, some of which are extremely successful. Space Marine 2, for example, performed so well that it even received praise from Games Workshop – and the realistic assessment that such success is not guaranteed again.
Among the dozens of games in the franchise on Steam, Dawn of War is the one with the best ratings, despite its age. However, most games with strong reviews are older and tend to have fewer user reviews on average than newer titles.
After the flop of Dawn of War 3, many fans are now looking forward to the remaster in August, and rightly so. The original already impressed with its design. With the right DLCs, almost all factions from the Warhammer world are available to you, each with their own units and fully voiced lines (even in German).
Dawn of War is therefore extremely well suited for entering the world, as it still plays like a strategy game, with a few Warhammer-specific peculiarities like scaled point limits for units. However, no prior knowledge is required. You can find more games of this kind here: The 7 best games to enter the world of Warhammer
