The Blood Ravens' Chapter Master Gabriel Angelos won't be in Dawn of War 4 so it can focus on relatively 'normal' heroes instead

Gabriel Angelos and some of his Blood Ravens — (Image credit: Relic)

Jan Theysen, creative director of Dawn of War 4 at King Art Games, recently told IGN that Dawn of War's original protagonist Gabriel Angelos won't be returning for their sequel. "That was actually one of the decisions we made relatively early. We don't want Gabriel Angelos in the game," he said.

Gabriel Angelos was the star of the story campaign in the original Dawn of War, though he didn't feature in all of the sequels and expansions. If you played Dark Crusade as the Blood Ravens they were commanded by Davian Thule, and in Soulstorm by Indrick Boreale. For Dawn of War 2 you played a nameless force commander known only as "Commander," though Angelos did eventually appear at the head of your reinforcements, and took over in Dawn of War 3—though the less said about that the better.

The trailer for Dawn of War 4 does show the return of other Blood Ravens. It's narrated by Scout Sergeant Cyrus, who seems to die at the end—though if he stays that way I'll be shocked. (He probably crosses the Rubicon Primaris, though if he became a dreadnought that would be neat too.) The chapter's Chief Librarian Jonah Orion is back as well.

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Which is neat. Dawn of War 4 does seem like it's toning down the disparity between wildly OP characters and paper-thin troops in Dawn of War 3 to return to something more like the original, where your heroes were badass, but if you didn't keep an eye on them could suddenly find themselves in a world of hurt.

As our Fraser Brown said after a few hours going hands-on with Dawn of War 4, "Blood Ravens—even their Terminators—ain't immortal. The relentless green tide can whittle them down, and the orks have some mean machines that can crack open space marines like tins of beans."

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Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

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