This lets you pause the action, read the situation, give commands to your troops and vehicle crews, and then unpause to have them unleash hell. The last element added to the Company of Heroes 3 formula is a new system called “Full Tactical Pause”. It adds yet another layer to the overall depth of the game. In practice I found that you could stop plenty of smaller tanks with a few rocket barrages to the back, but for medium tanks and larger, you’ll want to be more surgical. Side armor can turn a dangerous weapon into a 20 ton roadblock with a carefully placed shot. Instead you’ll need to target the side armor curtains, and ultimately the tracks and wheels to disable a tank efficiently. Tanks in Company of Heroes 2 only had front and rear armor to contend with, but that’s not where tanks are most vulnerable in the real world. The next major evolution came when I began to mobilize armored units into the field. Blitzing a frontline position with light tanks, and then scattering a squadron of mortars at close range, or creating immediate interlocking fields of fire changes the space, meaning you’ll have to change how you think about how the enemy can suddenly breach your position without warning. Getting your troops into battle on foot is dangerous and slow, but in Company of Heroes 3 you can now send them to the front lines mounted on armored vehicles. It creates another layer for the franchise, and one that can be used to great effect with the right placements. The high ground provides a tactical advantage, as well as a practical one as infantry gain bonuses when above their targets. Not only does a silhouetted tank become a very easy to sight target, but a similarly elevated sniper can be devastating to anything on the battlefield. The fighting in Europe and Africa wasn’t always giant empty flat spaces, and as such, having to be aware of elevation became important. There are quite a few improvements to the overall formula, but a few bubbled to the top immediately – verticality, tank riding, side armor, and tactical pause. While what we were playing was still a few months shy of launch and just a slice, that much was made very clear. Much of that improvement, according to Littman and Mele, came from direct engagement with all levels of players starting from the first day of development. To say that the game will be significantly more robust than its two predecessors combined would be an understatement. To fill out those four factions, the game will also have 120 units instead of the 42 the previous game had, with a total of 52 maps instead of 22. That means 41 missions instead of 14, and that’s before you get to multiplayer.īeyond campaign length, the team was also eager to share that the game will have four factions instead of two, as well as fully supporting mods at launch. You hear that all the time from developers, but these two brought the receipts.įirst and foremost, Company of Heroes 3 will ship with two full single player campaigns instead of one, and that campaign is semi-randomized, replayable, and clocks in at 40 hours on average to complete versus Company of Heroes 2’s 15 hours of play. Before our unfettered hands-on time with the game they proudly proclaimed that this would be the biggest Company of Heroes game to date. You could feel the infectious nature of their excitement, and it didn’t take long to see why. With nine years between entries, could they recapture what made Company of Heroes 2 so special? It took all of 5 minutes for me to see that Company of Heroes 3 won’t be as good as its predecessor – it’ll be infinitely better.įrom the moment VP of Production David Littman and Executive Producer Steve Mele spoke, it was clear that they are incredibly passionate about this project. Company of Heroes and its sequel soaked up a metric ton of tactical time for me, so I was more than a little excited to check out what Relic Entertainment had up their sleeve for the third entry.
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