THQ Inc. and Relic Entertainment today announced the second playable race in the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II – Retribution single player campaign.

In the next installment of the critically acclaimed Dawn of War II franchise, PC gamers will be able to take command of the Eldar in a unique campaign that concludes some of the key events in the Dawn of War series.   Leading the fight in this new Eldar campaign is the Autarch, a lethal and efficient commander of the Eldar warhost.

The first race revealed was the savage Orks, but no matter which race is chosen players will be taken on an epic journey through each story arc, revealing the answers to many questions left open in previous Dawn of War titles.

It is ten years since the events of Chaos Rising and Sub-Sector Aurelia has been in a constant state of warfare with the Imperium struggling to retain control. The apparent betrayal of the chapter by Gabriel Angelos and his Space Marines has shaken the Blood Ravens and now the Imperial forces are beset on all sides by hostile aliens. Retribution allows the player to select the race of their choosing in a battle to determine the very survival or destruction of the entire sector.

The game will be released via Steam and include Steamworks, no Games for Windows LIVE in this title. They said they are using Valve’s Steamworks networking and matchmaking to provide co-operative and competitive online play. This new back end will allow players to invite friends into matches from their Steam friends lists, and take advantage of the full set of Steam community features including groups, achievements, and Steam overlay chat channels. We are also going to include an all new matchmaking and ranking set up, built specifically for Dawn of War II – Retribution.

The move to Steamworks will also allow us to provide features like guest passes, free multiplayer weekends, pre-loading and the ability to provide fast turn-around on future patches and updates.

Also the game will be a stand alone title because of the Steamworks inclusion.