E3 2006 First Impressions: Company of Heroes by Relic for Windows PCs

Los Angeles (CA) - The world was saved - literally, truly - through a blizzard of ground skirmishes, often a few dozen men battling a few dozen men, that followed the greatest single gamble in the history of humanity. Sometimes, the notion of creating a video game around the battle to liberate France from the Nazi stranglehold might seem like belittling the memory of the fallen who sacrificed themselves for the sake of all that we are today. On the other hand, if we never took the opportunity to put ourselves in their situation for awhile, to feel how they made the decisions they made, we might actually overlook their enormous value.

Relic Entertainment’s Company of Heroes

Company of Heroes, developed by Relic Entertainment for THQ, walks a thin line. If it were to use the war for France as a backdrop for an action game, it could be quite offensive. But if it cast too sharp a focus on the historical context, it might cease to be a game altogether, and no one would play it. So this game walks a middle ground, taking some aesthetic license with regard to its context and its details, while adopting a respectful, honorable tone, even with regard to the men who had to fight for the Axis, often unwillingly.

Josh Mosquiera, one of Company of Heroes’ lead designers, walked TG Daily through the game at E3 on Thursday. It is not a shooter game. The action takes place in a theater of operations that lays itself open in front of you. "You," by the way, are not any of the people on the battlefield ; you’re not the sole hero upon whom the outcome of the war depends. Nor are you the battle commander phoning instructions to the troops from a safe distance of hundreds of miles, the way no battle commanders actually did during World War II. Instead, you take a background role as the writer of the story unfolding on screen. You develop a strategy for achieving the mission your squadron is given, which for the demo shown on the E3 floor, is the retaking of a small French village occupied by the German Army. You do make decisions on how your troops are given orders, and where they and their resources should be deployed.

But there’s no commando role in this game, which is fitting, since commando combat implies that overall responsibility for the mission could be entrusted to one man. The name Company of Heroes (plural) implies that isn’t really possible. The "company," specifically, is Able Company, of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne. There is a company commander, a C.O., whose life is indeed important ; but on the stage in front of you, all these men represent the soldiers of 1944.

Here, the map of history unfolds before you, which is actually more information that these troops ever had. You see the demarcation lines representing areas your armies cover, as well as the maximum radius of physical reach for each soldier, should hand-to-hand combat ever become necessary.

In a typical mission, your company is dropped by parachute behind enemy lines. But you can control where that takes place ; and perhaps unlike the way things tended to go in WWII itself, the game pays heed to your decision. Troops are dropped pretty much where you placed them. From there, they proceed toward their objective, but not like the little toy soldiers that have appeared in most every real-time troop movement game since the era of Avalon Hill, but as capable individuals that are aware of their environment, that can defend themselves and their company, and that take notice of their surroundings.

Perhaps nothing in this game is a mere boundary or border edge, or indestructible object. Almost everything that isn’t a soldier is a resource, including the ground itself. Buildings, once partly blown up, can be adapted for cover. Soldiers occupying a building soon make use of whatever shape it may have taken during the battle, which for this game is not predetermined. If soldiers have to knock out a window, or even part of a wall, to attain a proper shooting angle, they’ll do so. You don’t order them to do it ; that’s just part of their job.

As a Relic team member demonstrates, rather than simply choosing the spot that planes drop troops and supplies, you choose the angle at which the plane flies during the drop. This, he explained, is because snipers can hide inside trees or behind buildings, and planes flown the wrong direction can easily come under fire.

"The player is like the ’hand of God’ controlling the actions of the company commander," Mosquiera told us, "but there’s no player avatar...It’s all about making tactical battlefield decisions, and not micro-managing an officer."

Your "camera" is an unseen presence which glides over the terrain. From this mobile vantage point, it’s possible that you can see snipers in trees or behind buildings that probably wouldn’t be visible to your soldiers on the ground ; but rather than try to simulate reality, Company of Heroes simply leaves these things for you to discover.

Another perhaps unrealistic element is the battle time, which Mosquiera told us can extend to about 30 minutes, but not often longer. But to counter this, the game offers a realistic objective : Rather than try to shoot every Nazi off the edge of the planet, and ruin everything in your soldiers’ wake, they have a supply line to maintain, and your soldiers represent the leading edge of a wave of resources that not only boost your mission’s chance of success, but also refortify France with Allied supplies.

The battles themselves are not historically detailed, but they are thoughtfully rendered. There is definitely plenty of gore, as both Allied and Axis troops are often dismembered on the field. Meanwhile, some very fine aesthetic details maintain the semblance of dignity in the game, such as sycamore trees whose leaves rustle in the wind, and get tossed by the shrieks of nearby shrapnel.

The Allies have raised their flag over the town, but now they have to maintain it against an Axis onslaught. As the Nazis roll in, explosions from enemy tank fire or exploding artillery can cloud our view of the world.

Maintaining the dignity of one of history’s great turning points, while at the same time addressing the need for fun and excitement, is a daunting task. Yet from the first previews we’ve seen of Company of Heroes, Relic just may pull this off. At E3 this year, attendees were drawn to its detailed strategic gameplay, although some were turned away by the lack of a Hollywood hero or a commando leader. What attracted us to this game was its dignified, solemn approach to the simulation of warfare, which counters the unrealistic - and, frankly, false - representation of war in most modern gaming as a stage play with a star and a happy ending.

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