Company of Heroes 3 offers a much needed reboot of strategy games

In 2006 Relic Entertainment’s Company of heroes Released, the glory days of the real-time strategy genre were already coming to an end. The popularity of the 90s and early 00s as the main ones Warcraft, StarcraftOr Order and win First-person shooters, RPGs, and action games have begun to give way to blockbusters.

In the broad “strategy” umbrella, such as games Warcraft III It has evolved into a genre that is like powerful and eponymous characters mixed with fodder soldiers. Company of heroes Focused on small micro-managed units. These changes led to the creation of a genre that now stands as the most popular type of strategy game: the “multiplayer online battle platform”. Dota 2 Or league of legends.

And yet, almost 13 years after his first payment and ten consecutive years, Company of Heroes 3 Now he’s released a style of real-time strategy design and a World War II setting that wouldn’t feel out of place in the subgenre’s heyday.

Set during the Allied invasion of Italy and the North African Desert War; Company of heroes 3 is exactly what audiences familiar with the series or Relic’s real-time strategy games have come to expect. The player is cast as an invisible and all-powerful general during the Italian campaign, managing the movement of troops across a small Gulf map and Axis-held cities and military installations. They also control the production and deployment of troops and weapons in the massive battle for control of each region, both in Italian cities and at levels set in Egypt and Libya.

With its WWII setting – which thoroughly eclipsed mainstream games until the late ’00s – and its traditional approach to true real-time strategy, Company of Heroes 3 It can be a difficult proposition for a modern mainstream release. Can a new real-time strategy game satisfy fans of the subgenre and attract newcomers?

Steve Mele, executive director of Relic Entertainment, told WIRED that he’s made a new one. Company of heroes The 2020s game needs insight from fans of the series as a starting point. A “recurring theme” from this feedback was “the need for variety and depth of content” that “didn’t sacrifice core strategic gameplay.” [Company of Heroes] It is known.” To achieve this, Relic has worked to retain key elements of the series’ past while introducing new ones.

“Our algorithm was to keep some designs the same, improve some, and then add interesting new mechanics based on community feedback,” says Mele. The team used fan-participated playtests to strike this balance, leading to features like a “Tactical Pause” option that freezes the battlefield in solo mode. Although it may seem small, this feature is the kind of design choice that makes the game accessible to newcomers without the need for heavy genre rehashing of those already familiar with real-time strategy games.

Likewise, looking at the theaters of World War II that have been used extensively in existing games—the United Nations’ invasion of Western Europe, say, or the battles of the Eastern Front—enhances the kind of focus that is instantly released. The war can take.