[Watch] Dawn of War III shows off some of its maps, and hints at a new faction

The third installment of the Dawn of War franchise is in the works and developer Relic Entertainment recently gave us a glimpse of the battlefield players will duke it out on.

In the latest Fog of War video, the art director, Matt Kuzminski, and Lead Environment Artist, Tristan Brett, showed fans what to expect from the maps in Dawn of War III. In this video they showcased four of the maps that will be available in Dawn of War III and they all have some story to them.

There is Cyprus Ultima, a "medieval" world that helps to express the way of life for people in the 41st millennia. The second map shows was Cage World, a map described as "very alien and very disorienting" with moving cubes that can be used to both create and block paths, creating a more dynamic map and a map style that has never been seen in Dawn of War before. Cage Wolrd is described to consist of "almost living metal", that phrase and a generator and some glyphs at 1:43 in the video above is something that made hardcore fans of Warhammer 40.000 to believe that the Necrons would be a surprise fourth faction, just like the Tyranids in Dawn of war II. The third map, Starfort, didn't seem to hide as much information as the previous one. It takes players onboard a massive starship that looks totally bad ass where a lot of thought went into making it as believable as possible. The fourth and final map is Acheron, a snowy wasteland mixed with lava streams and age-old buildings, it also seems like the map shown in most of the early gameplay videos, such as the one from E3.

All of these maps also show how much attention to detail Relic had when creating them, there is much more to look at outside of the playable areas than in Dawn of War II, for example, and they are also using the maps, items on them, atmosphere, and such, to tell the story of the game. Seems like Dawn of War III will tell its story both through cut scenes and through the maps themselves.

Dawn of War III has no set release date yet, but we here at GameZone will let you know as soon as they announce it.