This week in games: Relic sunsets Dawn of War III, Kerbal Space Program gets an expansion

Far Cry 5’s latest trailer gives its dog companion captions so you’ll understand his story. The sad part? I don’t think that’s in the real game. Imagine traveling through rural Montana with your talking canine, A Boy and His Dog style. Amazing, right?

That trailer, plus Relic abandoning Dawn of War III, a slew of release dates and sequel announcements, a new Soren Johnson project, and more below. This is gaming news for February 5 to 9.

Operators vs Aliens

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Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege Year 3 Pass [Online Game Code]

Price When Reviewed:$29.99

This week on Rainbow Six Siege: People screaming “Contact!” and “Jesus Christ!” while monsters run around in the fog, and then some calm diplomacy between the USA and Russia. If last week’s trailer for the upcoming Outbreak event didn’t pique your interest, this one probably won’t either. But me? I am 100 percent ready for Rainbow Six Siege Plus Aliens Or Zombies Or Whatever.

One small step for Kerbals

Kerbal Space Program emerged from Early Access nearly three years ago, if you can believe it, and in all that time it’s never had a paid expansion—until now. The upcoming Making History expansion got a March 13 release date this week, plus a more detailed explanation of its features. The most interesting is probably the Mission Builder, which will allow people to create and publish their own missions.

Personally I’m most interested in the new “History Pack” campaign though, “a variety of pre-made missions inspired by humankind’s own space exploration,” plus “new parts and astronaut suits inspired by the Space Race.” I’m happy to have an excuse to dig back into Kerbal again.

Montana’s finest

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Far Cry 5 [Online Game Code]

Price When Reviewed:$59.99Best Prices Today:$59.99 at Amazon

Far Cry 5 continues to focus its marketing efforts on all the friendly faces you’ll meet in rural Montana next month. This week’s “Gun for Hire” video takes that idea to an extreme, with over five minutes of pilot friends, murderer friends, sneaky friends, doggy friends, and more. (Seriously, stick around to 04:23 to see the dog part, complete with excellent bark captions.)

Darkest after the dawn

Not even a year ago, I was still sort-of looking forward to Dawn of War III. Even a decade later, the original Dawn of War is still a fantastic RTS—probably one of the all-time greats. Dawn of War III was…not.

Sales were apparently in-line with that mediocre reception, and as a result Sega and Relic appear to have taken the Mass Effect: Andromeda approach. All planned post-release content, including new factions and so on, is now canceled, with Relic “shifting focus to other projects within our portfolio.” Makes sense from a business perspective, though that attitude has to suck for the people who bought Dawn of War III thinking there was more to come, or that the game might be fixed in the future. (Via Eurogamer)

Cloudy future

More sad news this week, as Sunless Sea developer Failbetter Games laid off about a quarter of the studio. Apparently since hitting Early Access last August, follow-up Sunless Skies “sold about 15 percent as many copies as Sunless Sea” did in a comparable Early Access period. Reasons cited by Failbetter include “We went into Early Access too early” and “The marketplace is hugely different to the last time we launched an Early Access game.”

In any case, Failbetter goes on to say “There’s no danger of us failing to deliver the project you backed. But the business has a lot less cash in the bank than we wanted to have at this point.” Pretty common story these days, it seems. Best of luck to them—I for one am still looking forward to a Sunless Sea follow-up.

Vampyrs are coming

It feels like we’ve been waiting forever for Vampyr, the story-centric vampire game from Life is Strange developer Dontnod. That wait’s coming to an end though, as Dontnod tagged a June 5 release date onto the end of its fourth and final behind-the-scenes video. Seems a bit weird to have those come to an end months before the release in question, but I’m still looking forward to sinking my teeth into this one.

Another Surge

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The Surge: Complete Edition

Price When Reviewed:$49.99

The Surge is one of those 2017 games I just didn’t spend enough time with, but it sounds like the sort-of Souls-esque sci-fi game did well enough to earn a sequel. Deck13 announced The Surge 2 this week, with a release tentatively scheduled for 2019 and promising “larger and more ambitious level design.” Maybe I should carve out some time for the original.

Ten Princes

Soren Johnson was lead designer on my favorite Civilization game, Civ IV, but these days I’m more impressed that he’s parlayed that credibility into weird, genre-breaking 4X games. With economy-centric 4X Offworld Trading Company finished, he and the rest of the team at Mohawk Games are now working on 10 Crowns, described as a “classic historical 4X strategy game with some important and radical innovations to the genre.”

Watch your back, Civ.

Octogeddon

And if you’re looking for something to play this weekend, might I suggest Octogeddon? It’s billed as “From the creator of Plants vs. Zombies,” and looks every bit like something PopCap would’ve made pre-EA acquisition. It’s a game where an octopus equips itself with a chicken arm? I…don’t really know how to explain. Here’s a launch trailer.