From time to time I see someone ask about the Company of Heroes 3 campaign and its new dynamic map and haven’t had a chance to play pre-alpha in july. Apparently this also crossed the mind of Relic Entertainment, which this week released a new development diary on the topic.
Unlike the main campaign of Company of Heroes 2, Company of Heroes 3 uses a strategic layer relatively similar to that of Total War. The concept had already been explored in the Ardennes Assault expansion and Relic itself mentions in the video that it was one of the foundations. for building Company of Heroes 3.
Now the campaign allows you to move your troops to capture territories, supply and logistics points or airports. In addition to generating “random” battles outside of traditional missions, it will be a crucial element in the unfolding of the Mediterranean. For, both the player and the opponent have access to the same “skills” so to speak. The Axis can use air or naval attacks to misrepresent your supply lines and you can use ships to facilitate invasions in certain regions.
According to Relic, a player will be able to specialize in a type of “combat”, for example, the use of paratroopers. Details on how the specialization and what its impact will be were not discussed in the videos.
From what I played in both Single Player and Multiplayer pre-alpha, I can see this idea of specialization working, but it will require the player to have a good understanding of how the logistics system works – and what are the main distribution packages supply – in addition to strong control and defense of the region’s main airports.
I don’t hesitate to say that I’m really looking forward to playing the final version of Company of Heroes 3, which still doesn’t have a release date beyond “2022” on PC. I really hope that Relic’s vision of the campaign works; most real-time strategy games need this component to break the “sameness”. If not, we end up with another “Age of Empires IV” on our hands.
