Developer Interview

Relic's John Johnson gives us a first look at the dazzling Company of Heroes.

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The developer known as Relic first hit the game development scene in 1998 with Homeworld, a highly innovative space strategy game that put battles in full 3D. Since then, the studio has continued to try to advance real-time strategy games as we know them past the basics of gathering resources, building a base, and buying up a bunch of military units. Most recently, the studio has attempted to shift its games in the direction of "action-oriented gameplay," which involves games that give players immediate and spectacular feedback for pretty much everything they do. We've seen this with Relic's most recent game, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, a brutal and action-packed game that pitted some of the most vicious combatants in that sci-fi universe against one another. And now, Relic and publisher THQ are taking the next step in their plan to take real-time strategy into a whole new space with Company of Heroes.

Company of Heroes will attempt to re-create the excitement and drama of the best World War II motion pictures.

Company of Heroes will attempt to combine riveting, accessible real-time strategy gameplay with the cinematic sensibilities of blockbuster World War II movies and TV series, like Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. Yes, Company of Heroes takes place during the second World War, but calling it nothing more than "a World War II real-time strategy game" is selling it short. This is because the game will introduce as much groundbreaking new gameplay as it will dazzling visual effects as part of Relic's overarching plan. The studio isn't just out to make a great real-time strategy game; these guys are out to advance real-time strategy as we know it. From what we've seen, it could be very hard to go back to the real-time strategy games of yore after this.

But why World War II? Isn't "World War II strategy game" a synonym for "slow-paced, overly complicated game where you fight drawn-out battles by crunching numbers and moving tiny chits on an abstract-looking board"? We can tell you right now this isn't the case. (We'll get into this shortly, but go ahead and check our exclusive E3 trailer on the following page if you don't believe us.) Still, isn't World War II a bit overused in modern games (especially first-person shooters)? Producer John Johnson explains that Relic believes the war actually still has a lot to offer in terms of telling a compelling story. "World War II is modern mythology," explains Johnson. And in keeping with Relic's goal of creating action-oriented gameplay, Johnson suggests that Company of Heroes may very well come to resemble recent shooters, like Medal of Honor and Call of Duty, for being just as fast-paced and exciting.

It almost seems impossible to start talking about Company of Heroes without first mentioning the all-new technology that powers it. The game is powered by Relic's brand-new "Essence" engine, which the studio has built from scratch to take advantage of all next-generation graphical effects, like high-dynamic-range lighting, normal mapping, dynamic lighting and shadows, and advanced shader effects. As Johnson puts it, the game will have "every advanced graphical effect you'd expect from a game like Half-Life 2, and more." We've seen the game firsthand, and this isn't an exaggeration. Company of Heroes looks incredible.

Among other things, the game models small-scale tactical encounters on the ground between individual soldiers, jeeps, and tanks, as well as aerial runs from bombers overhead. And everything is rendered with remarkable detail. We took a close-up look at an individual American soldier, whose shiny helmet and rumpled uniform got convincingly muddied with use. All infantry units in the game will move using a skeletal animation that is context-sensitive; that is, depending on where your soldiers are, they'll automatically move differently.

You can expect to see everything in the game rendered with unbelievable detail.

We watched the soldier adopt several different stances, including a standard forward march, a dashing forced march, a cautious advance in which he continuously looked from side to side, and, finally, a dive to a prone position, from which the soldier sidled forward on his belly. As supervising graphics programmer Ian Thomson demonstrated, the level of detail shown on each soldier isn't just limited to facial expressions (and even lip synching, a rare feature indeed for real-time strategy games) and mud on uniforms. The game's advanced lighting engine will also allow for "localized lighting," which is environmental light and shadow mapping (such as the shadows of trees and buildings that pass across soldiers as they walk under them, for example). Thomson then showed off the same soldier under, of all things, a disco ball. While this demonstration might have seemed amusing, this actually showed the soldier with more than 40 distinct colored and animated lights shifting along his body. You'll see this in the game as multiple animated lights from incidental sources on soldiers, such as muzzle flashes from a soldier's gun (and from his nearby buddies' guns and from nearby explosions) during night missions.