A campaign loading screen, showing Planet Tartarus.
Dawn of War has a simple, completely linear single-player campaign that is 11 missions long. The campaign can only be played as Space Marines, represented by the Blood Ravens Chapter, which was created for the game. The setting is an Imperial colony planet named Tartarus, which is being defended by the Imperial Guard against an unexplained Ork invasion at the beginning of the game.
The player will advance to the next mission after completing the previous one. No decisions, gains or losses can carry over to subsequent missions. There is only a briefing screen with a looping video of the battlefield, with a briefing text voiced by Captain Gabriel Angelos.
Difficulty levels[]
The main menu and difficulty options.
There are three single-player difficulty levels in Dawn of War, and the effects of each are as follows:
- Normal: Enemies have 50% health
- Hard: Enemies have 100% health
- Insane: Enemies have 150% health
Thus, "Normal" – which really does not require much effort to complete – might be termed "easy" on the usual RTS difficulty scale (meaning how it compares to other similar games), "Hard" could be called "normal" and only "Insane" is truly hard.
Battlefield missions[]
The actual missions use the same mechanic and gameplay as the multiplayer portion of the game, with minor differences regarding certain units and, of course, quite different starting circumstances. Generally the player starts with a minimal base – or even no base at all – while the enemies will be completely set up. Certain events are scripted and advanced units are not available in the first missions.
Mission walkthroughs[]
The briefing screen.