When Big Time Software released Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord last year, it became one of the most critically acclaimed games in recent years, garnering a lengthy string of glowing reviews and awards. Many feel that this tactical simulation of late World War II combat in Western Europe has single-handedly redefined wargaming's potential.

Unlike most traditional wargames, Combat Mission presents battles in 3D, and it features an intuitive interface and an innovative turn-based/real-time game design. During each turn, you take as much time as you like studying the battlefield and issuing commands to your units during an orders phase. After that, the actions of both sides' troops play out simultaneously in real time during a one-minute action phase. The alternation between careful deliberation and dramatic action gives the game a unique pace, and the meticulous attention to historical detail allows for great realism and tactical subtlety.

Now Big Time Software is hard at work on Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin. As in Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord, the focus will be on company- and battalion-sized battles, with units representing squads, weapons teams, and individual vehicles and field guns. This time, though, the game will center on the brutal fighting between the Axis and Soviet forces on the eastern front. We recently got to talk with Charles Moylan, president of Big Time Software and lead engineer and co-designer of Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin.

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GameSpot: What do you feel has been the key to Combat Mission's success, and how do you hope to repeat or build on that success with Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin?

Charles Moylan: It's mainly that we, as gamers, made a game that we really wanted to play, rather than a generic "corporate" game that would (in theory) sell to a mass market.

What that means is that we did a lot of research, got the military history right, and combined that with a cool 3D graphics engine and novel hybrid real-time/turn-based control system, never cutting corners. It took us a long time to build Combat Mission, and I doubt that we would have been allowed to take so much time crafting the game if we were not independent. But since we are, we had that freedom, and I think it was a good decision.

We'll take the same approach with Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin. That's why we don't have a firm ship date--we won't ship the game until we're satisfied that it's truly complete. Combat Mission gamers are on our message board right now making suggestions, helping out with research, and contributing ideas. And we listen to them.

GS: The eastern front conflict was massive in scope. How much of it can we reasonably expect to see modeled in Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin? What specific geographical regions, time periods, and nationalities will be modeled?

CM: The dauntingly massive scale of the eastern front is one reason that our first Combat Mission game took place on the (smaller) western front. It was no accident.

Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin opens with Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, and covers the entire period from there until the end of the war in Europe, including the fall of Berlin.

You can count on seeing virtually all the terrain fought over on the eastern front made available in Combat Mission. We're adding new terrain types to the palette, including steppe, tundra, birch forests, soft boggy ground, corduroy roads, and more. Further, we'll have each battle be set in a "region" (southern, central, northern, and arctic), and this will determine or influence local terrain, weather, and balance and availability of various military forces and nations.

Nations included are the Soviet Union, Germany, Finland, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Poland, and Partisans.