The most dangerous commander of all is General Winter.
Relic’s 2006 WW2 RTS Company of Heroes is widely considered one of the best strategy games ever created, as a World War II spinoff of the developer’s popular Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War games. Given the game’s acclaim, it isn’t very surprising to learn that a sequel is now officially on its way – though that doesn’t make it any less exciting.
The news broke today when one NeoGAF user‘s copy of next month’s PC Gamer magazine arrived early. On the cover was a Russian officer in the middle of a bloody winter battle, snazzy fur cap on his head and pistol in his hand – because whereas the first Company of Heroes dealt primarily with the Allies-Axis confrontation on the Western Front (you know, D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and every American movie ever made about the European campaign) the sequel will be moving to the East.
The vast majority of the Company of Heroes 2 campaign will put the player in the shoes of the Russian Red Army as they try to defend against Hitler’s inexorable invasion force before turning the tide and pushing the Nazis all the way back to Berlin (whoops, spoilers). Naturally, the slightly-chilly Russian weather will play a role in the game as it did in real life, with the abundant snow slowing down troop and tank movement but providing cover from gunfire in battle.
In case you’re wondering what’s so important about WW2’s Eastern Front – understandable, given that most of our readers are located in countries whose participation in the war was along the Western Front, and whose mass media (also understandably) focuses on those events – allow me to educate you.
The Eastern Front was the biggest, and arguably most critical military showdown in history. The initial Nazi invasion of the East, Operation Barbarossa, was the largest invasion ever launched. The six-month Battle of Stalingrad remains one of the bloodiest battles in all of human history, and marks perhaps the single biggest turning point of WW2 as the Russians repelled the Nazi advance and began to go on the offensive.
All in all, the scale of operations on the Eastern Front was four times the size of the battles on the Western Front, and featured some truly incredible moments of badassery, like a single squad of Russian soldiers holding off the Nazi army from a lone apartment building for two whole months. So yes, the Eastern Front should make one hell of an RTS if Relic is up to the task, and judging by the first Company of Heroes I can’t think of any reason to assume otherwise.
The game is currently scheduled for a 2013 release, and if you’d like to learn more, then pick up this coming month’s PC Gamer for the full reveal.
Source: NeoGAF
