In the grim dark future of the 41st millennium, there is only war—and that kind of attitude invites a lot of yelling. Angry human yells, angry alien yells, angry daemonic yells, someone, somewhere is always yelling in the world of Warhammer 40,000. But in our own universe, there’s also been a lot of yelling about yelling as of late.
Recently, Relic Entertainment announced that it would be reviving the classic original entry in the Warhammer 40K game series Dawn of War with a new remaster, cleaning up and updating the beloved 2004 RTS for modern computers. To celebrate the announcement of its release date, late last week the developers behind Dawn of War Definitive Edition released a similarly remastered trailer cleaning up Dawn of War‘s legendary opening cinematic.
It remains, for the most part, a banger bit of 40K goodness. It’s got Space Marines, it’s got Orks, it’s got lots of violence and heroic last stands—and, spoilers for an intro cinematic to a video game released 21 years ago—a suitably Warhammer-esque Pyrrhic victory, because everything does need to be at least a little bit bleak, even the hopeful stuff.
But it’s not exactly the same as the original cinematic, and that has, of course, riled up Dawn of War fans who, despite having to deal with new rules and codexes every edition of Warhammer, are not fond of change (unless they play Thousand Sons, I guess).
Whatever is the matter? A scream. Specifically, the scream of the Blood Ravens sergeant cried around 42 seconds into the above trailer. You might notice that it’s not really a scream; in fact, it’s not even that sergeant actually speaking. The “Space Marines, attack!” dialogue actually comes from the game itself, one of the lines spoken by campaign protagonist Gabriel Angelos. That’s not Angelos in the trailer, because, as you can see above—and, again, spoilers for an intro cinematic to a video game released 21 years ago—the trailer ends with the sergeant perishing, sacrificing himself to call in reinforcements. Reinforcements led by Angelos, because that’s what the actual events of Dawn of War are about.
But it’s more than just the character switcheroo 40K fans are miffed about. They miss the oddly lo-fi, yet charmingly guttural primal shriek the sergeant screams in the original cutscene. You can hear it for yourself below, at a similar mark in the trailer (you’d hope so, considering it’s basically the same thing but in 720p):
“you put back his battlecry RIGHT FREAKING NOW OR ILL GET ANGRY,” one top comment reads. “Leaving the sergeant’s scream out is a crime against humanity, and therefore heresy,” adds another. One helpfully links to a shitpost version of the trailer where the sergeant is just endlessly screaming throughout.
Suffice to say, what should’ve been an easy nostalgic play to Warhammer fans did not exactly go as planned for Relic. So, in a bid to stop all the screaming about a scream, the developer is promising to fix the intro cinematic in time for Dawn of War Definitive Edition‘s launch next month.
“We decided to change the scream as the original audio was quite distorted which was notable when compared to some of the audio touch-ups in the enhanced trailer,” a statement provided by Relic to IGN about the situation reads in part. “That said, we’ve heard the feedback from fans—the roar was even more beloved than we realized! Who knows, we may have something for OG roar enjoyers before long.”
Distorted as it may be, that’s part of the charm of the original trailer. At the time, it was perhaps one of the few highest-fidelity imaginings of the 40K universe we’d gotten to see in this manner. But it’s still crunchy and guttural and weird-sounding, which might sound jarringly distorted in a modern sense, but it kind of feels perfect for Warhammer‘s vision of the miserable future. Everyone’s screaming, and the screaming sounds kinda bad to boot!
Thankfully, Dawn of War‘s iconic scream will return in time for Definitive Edition’s release on PC next month on August 14.
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