Company of Heroes, I'm impressed with what I hear

[Greatatlantic]

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/com ... id=6149084

This is a preview of Relic's (Dawn of War) new RTS, Compnay of Heroes. Yes, it is another WWII game. However, a lot of the things they are trying to do sound really fun at this time.

In Company of Heroes, Relic wants to let you command infantry squads and vehicles on an incredibly realistic battlefield. As lead designer Josh Mosqueira tells us, the company's goals were: "real soldiers, real battlefields, and real war." To do this, Relic is introducing what it calls "environmental strategy," which promises to make you rethink real-time strategy altogether. In most real-time strategy games, you can go only where the level designers want you to go, because you can't really affect the environment. But if you have a bazooka capable of blowing up a tank, why can't it blow a hole in the wall that's blocking your progress? Company of Heroes will let you knock down that wall, and pretty much everything else, since all objects in the game have physical properties and operate according to the laws of physics (or, as Relic likes to put it, Hollywood physics). This isn't the same thing as buildings exploding if you knock their hit points down to zero, like in so many other games. The damage done in Company of Heroes is specific and scales depending on the weapon that inflicted it. Bullets will bounce off a brick wall, but a tank shell will blast a hole or tear a chunk out of that same wall. And this idea changes everything, because with a dynamic battlefield you have so many more options available to you. More importantly, your soldiers will recognize this, as well.

The preview mentions other fun ideas, like building on site sand bag forts and using recon units. And this is coming form the people who made Dawn of War, arguably the best RTS made in years.

 

[roguefrog]

They also did Impossible Creatures, Worst?
And Homeworld, Great!

 

[kingcomrade]

Realistic environments, pff. What I saw in the last video preview was a couple settings stolen right from Call of Duty. Very original

I am kinda looking forward to it, as Dawn of War without any expansions is a pretty cool game.

 

[Ryuken]

It sounds good but that whole 'meticulously destroy WWII scenery' has been done in an excellent way already in Soldiers: Heroes of WWII (of which the sequel, Faces of War, will come out this year too I think).

 

[CrusaderTemplar]

im looking forward to the AI. Incredibly smart i hear.

 

[kingcomrade]

They always say the AI is smart.