Company of Heroes is one of those impressive RTS games with high production values, though its attention to detail and full cinematic presentation leaves you wanting for more after you’ve seen a mere snippet of what is on offer. Not due for release until 2006 it has already impressed the hordes of journalists who saw it at the recent E3, coming away with a number of prestigious awards. Developed by Relic, who have a proven track record, Company of Heroes, using cutting edge technology, is shaping up for great things. Set in WWII it focuses on a collection of soldiers as they fight their way across Europe in the greatest war mankind has ever known. Derek dela Fuente spoke with Quinn Duffy, Senior Designer from Relic, about the kind of detail and push to create an RTS with a unique feel and innovations and although early in its production he managed to get some snippets of fresh information on this still to be fully unveiled game!

TVG: How would you best describe Company of Heroes and do you see this as a change in direction from previous Relic titles – and how?

COH is Relic’s next-generation RTS and this title pushes the technical and design envelope further than any other RTS we’ve seen. The game is set in WW2 where you take command of a company of soldiers from the invasion beaches of Normandy through the campaign in France. Company of Heroes sticks pretty closely to the Relic script established in our other games like Homeworld, Impossible Creatures, and Dawn of War; that is, we are creating a game that pushes a lot of boundaries, but we wrap that all in an accessible, engaging, and cinematically rendered experience. We created a brand new game engine called the Essence Engine to drive the whole thing and give us the horsepower we needed to bring WW2 to life. The biggest difference with Company of Heroes compared to other games is now that we’re part of THQ Inc. we have a lot more resources and are really able to put in the time and energy required to bring the game to the next level. This is by far our biggest and most advanced project to date.

TVG: If you had to talk about one innovation that Company of Heroes offers in terms of extending the RTS envelope what would it be?

To be honest, it’s tough to pick one thing because there are a lot of innovations in Company of Heroes. While some of these features (physics, fully destroyable environments, highly detailed models, shooter-quality graphics) have been seen individually in other games, no one has combined them all into one RTS. Our feature set compares more favourably to the latest generation shooters than to other RTSs. And I think the way we’ve integrated these features into our gameplay is also a big innovation on its own.

If I had to pick one big thing though, it would have to be our fully destructible environments. Everything – and I mean everything – is destroyable in the game, and while the fully integrated Havok 3 physics means destroying these objects is always spectacular and completely unique, as a game designer I love how much strategy it adds to the game. This environmental strategy factors into gameplay in a way that I feel will fundamentally change the genre. As a simple example, let’s say I have some enemy infantry taking cover on the other side of a stone wall; eventually I might be able to root them out with rifle and machine gun fire, but I can also decide to blow a hole in the wall with a bazooka or tank round and use my infantry to flank them from the side and negate their cover, or I could use mortars or grenades to lob over the wall, or if I was particularly grumpy, I could equip my tank with a bulldozer and just flatten the whole thing – unfortunately, I lose the chance to use it as cover myself so my decisions have immediate and future repercussions.

TVG: How important is technology to both Relic and Company of Heroes and can you tell us about some of the features that go to make up the Essence engine which also has the Havoc engine integrated?

While we like to say that gameplay is key, the fact is that the technology is absolutely critical to us realizing the game and the experiences we want the player to have. The Essence Engine is a huge advancement over our previous technologies and will underpin a lot of our development in the next few years. I’ve touched on some of the technologies already, but elements like our new rendering code with all of the latest graphical shaders lifts the whole game to a visual fidelity like I’ve never seen before in an RTS; the Havok physics brings weight and life to the environment and is just so cool; our animation system handles thousands of seamless transitions; and in-house tools, like our Movie Maker and World Builder, help our animators deliver on Relic’s signature cinematic style with an ease that we’ve only dreamt about on past projects.

TVG: You are going for a more filmic, real, approach to immerse the players and give a more believable experience with extensive soldier reactions and movements but isn’t this the focus of any game by developers and can you touch upon a few discernable features that show Relic is achieving these goal? (From what we’ve seen the game looks fabulous.)

We are going for a really believable experience and it is all about immersion, so you’re completely correct, but I think Relic is relatively unique, especially in the RTS genre, for our consistent approach to creating a cinematic, lifelike experience for the player. That’s a difficult thing to do in an RTS game as compared to a shooter. RTSs are extremely abstract and therefore harder to draw in the casual player, harder to give them the kind of visceral experience they might get in a shooter like Call of Duty. I mean your ‘empire’ usually consists of 10 buildings and 20 'peons'; your mighty ‘army’ is basically 30 soldiers and a tank. What’s epic or cinematic about that? We’re throwing that on its ear with Company of Heroes. We want everything in the game to feel contextual, like it belongs, and that goes a huge way to maintaining that suspension of disbelief. Everything we do is done with a conscious effort to facilitate the highest quality experience for the player. I know that sounds like marketing speak, but why else would we put so much effort into our models, our sounds, the look and feel of the world, intelligent squad AI? Why make everything in the world destroyable? ...Because it adds to believability of the experience in a hugely tangible way.

TVG: Continuing on from the last question - : What kind of extra background research has the team done and how difficult is it to convey fear, tension, and suspense into a game and is the 'emotional' factor of the game one you are focusing on? (Tell us some tricks to give the games it 'mood' and is it all about conveying the right cinematic look - an area you will be focusing?)

We spent a lot of time researching historical and contemporary accounts, regimental histories, technical manuals, and we watched just about every war movie ever made. There are a lot of WW2 aficionados and amateur historians on the team, and this is finally a chance, outside Trivial Pursuit that is, to put that knowledge to some good effect!

Our new engine really allows us to add emotion back into the RTS experience and focus on that overwhelming sense of vulnerability an infantryman must have experienced coming face to face with an MG42 just before it opens up. We can tell those individual’s stories now. Sound, animation, movement, posture – all of these provide a sense of human reaction to our units. We can also highlight emotions for the player, things like tension, danger, fear…most of that we deal with in our moviemaker tool using the same kinds of tricks that Spielberg used in Saving Private Ryan. Not to say we’re all Spielbergs over here, but at least we have some of the same mechanisms at our disposal now.

TVG: Have you used any military advisors on the project and what is the setting, story for the game and the first main task for the player? To add, does war really offer a cohesive story?

We’re not yet prepared to talk about our subject matter experts at this point, or many details about the story apart from the fact that it is set in Normandy. However, I would say that war offers countless opportunities for cohesive stories. All you have to do is read some of the regimental war diaries from any front line units of the combatant nations and you can find great stories in every one.

TVG: Can you tell us some of the basic items and personnel you will have in your control and what kind of progression the game will have?

Apart from what we showed at E3, we’re not revealing more information about this. However, you can expect the types of units you’d see in movies like Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan. There is a range of infantry units, support units, heavy weapons, and vehicles.

TVG: What kind of resource management will the game offer?

I won’t get into specifics at this point, but I can say we’re really pushing contextualization for this system. You won’t find any soldiers chopping lumber in Company of Heroes.

TVG: What interesting behavioural factors do the squad have and will they do things independently without request?

Our squad AI is very cool, very advanced, and pretty self-sufficient. The big thing to get across is that squads will always do what the player ordered. However, squads have a strong sense of self-preservation in that they’ll seek nearby cover, use appropriate weapons against the best targets, and intelligently handle enemies and friendlies moving around them. They also pick good formations depending on the terrain they’re in. The squad AI adds to the believability of the world, and frees up player time because they don’t have to babysit every unit on the battlefield.

Many thanks and we shall be back soon for a full update!