“If they turn off, they might not be able to turn them on again”: The charming reason behind Dawn of War 4’s excitable, dancing mech

If you watch the Dawn of War 4 trailer showing off the Adeptus Mechanicus faction, you might have spotted a mech that’s practically dancing on the spot. The excitable little thing looks to be itching to get into the fight. It turns out, it’s not channeling the spirit of a warmongering puppy, it’s got to keep moving for very serious lore reasons.

“They can never stop,” Dawn of War 4’s creative director Jan Theysen tells me. “They’re always moving and always walking because the Adeptus Mechanicus fear that if they turn off, they might not be able to turn them on again. So they just keep them moving all the time.”

Created by the Tech-priest Aldebrac Vingh in the early 33rd Millennium, the Ironstrider mechs are basically perpetual motion machines sporting a great big aurocannon on the top. Able to tirelessly march across a battlefield forever, the pilots are liable to die of old age before the mechs halt. In fact, according to the very in-depth lore entry, that tends to be what happens. Whenever a pilot shuffles off their mortal coil a new one has to chase off after the wandering mech, climb up to the cockpit, dump the old pilot’s body out, and climb in.

The tech-priests around Vingh were apparently so jealous of his perfect creation that he was killed off before he could share the secret of how they were made and could be repaired. Thus, they’re in the position of never being stopped and never being turned off, just in case these valuable longrange sharpshooting robots can’t be turned back on again.

That’s all to say, the Ironstriders created a small problem for developer King Art when it came to adding the unit to Dawn of War 4. “Of course, we couldn’t have a unit that moves all the time,” Theysen explains. As much as lore is good to be obeyed, in a strategy game, you can’t have units wandering off from their positions. Which is how they hit on the stamping and walking on the spot. “That was something that people immediately recognized in the trailer, and they were very happy about that because it was like a nice little wink. If you know, you know.”

Something Adeptus Mechanicus fans won’t have seen is a Titan arriving in battle. Titans are the jewel in the crown of the faction’s army. Vast walking fortresses, these mega mechs dominate the battlefield. Though, how they actually reach a warzone hasn’t been shown before. It may sound like a small issue, but how would you do it? Personally, I’m picturing the Blue Marlin, the ship that carries other ships. King Art had a different idea.

“We talked to Games Workshop about it and they said, ‘Well, we have this concept of a Knights drop pod’,” Theysen says. To recruit one of these titans you basically build an entire spaceport for these massive machines to land. The pod that comes crashing through the atmosphere and Knight climbs out into battle. The landing site doesn’t disappear either, it remains as a turret site. “It feels very Warhammer,” Theysen adds with a chuckle.

When it came Warhammer 40,000’s factions, I’d never really been drawn to Adeptus Mechanicus. I’m an Imperial Guard player at heart, with a soft spot for the Gundam-stylings of the Tau. But I’m definitely warming to them now I know they’re effectively the Emperor’s IT department, desperate to keep the various out of date bits of kit and machinery running because the people who set them up have long since died. As someone who has arrived at a website 20 years into its life and often finds themselves digging through the CMS to work out what different checkboxes and radio buttons do, the tech-priests have my sympathies.