In Good Company

With games like Homeworld, Impossible Creatures, and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, Relic Entertainment always placed its real-time strategy games in (relatively) unique worlds. It’s next game, Company of Heroes, is set in WWII. That isn’t so unique, yet despite the familiarity of the setting, it manages to stand out.
Making good use of their new engine, Relic’s Jay Wilson explains that Company of Heroes has “destructible everything,” and he certainly enjoys showing off this particular feature. In the demo, an enemy squad is packed into a building. Using their god powers, they spawn endless soldiers that die rushing the place. Since that doesn’t work, they decide to blow up the building. And it’s not just some canned hole in the wall; there’s debris everywhere, and it looks natural.
Showing off the combat-reactive AI, the soldiers actually do smart things without your direct orders. But of course, you can still force them to die needlessly. With countless different animations for each soldier, you might even see them be upset about it.
It all looks very action-packed, but there’s still some strategy. You can flank those soldiers holed up in a French café or use your dead buddies as meat shields; in the latter case, once they’re shot up enough they no longer provide cover. Everything takes damage, so part of the fun is figuring out clever ways to keep your men alive.
Wilson also talked a lot about the game being cinematic. Not that this is anything new for the game industry, but Company of Heroes will have a custom map and moviemaker built in to the game. They expect people to make their own movies.
Though it’s too early to say this with any certainty, what’s been shown of Company of Heroes thus far makes you think it could be the Call of Duty of the WWII RTS. Publisher THQ certainly hopes so.

This article originally appeared in Computer Games Magazine #177