Welcome back Commander!
The legendary strategy franchise is back, combining heart-pounding combat with new layers of strategy in a breathtaking Mediterranean setting. Relic Entertainment™ and SEGA® are thrilled to reveal that Company of Heroes™ 3, the latest instalment in the critically acclaimed strategy series, is coming to PC in late 2022.
Be sure to Wishlist it here on Steam and check out the latest screenshots, trailers and game details.
Our amazing Company of Heroes community can now go ‘hands-on’ with our free Pre-Alpha Preview. For three weeks starting July 12th 11am PDT, experience a pre-alpha ‘glimpse’ of our single player campaign and give us your feedback. To gain free access, simply join our new CoH-Development program here.
Joining CoH-Development immediately grants you access to our game forums to discuss the new game and our legacy titles. In addition, Relic developers will be sharing design documents, concepts, visuals, insights and more as we continue our development journey with you.
“We’re really excited for players to experience Company of Heroes 3 right from the pre-alpha stage and to receive their valuable feedback,” said Justin Dowdeswell, General Manager at Relic Entertainment. “We’ve been co-developing the game with our fantastic community members for years now, and they have been instrumental in providing consistent and meaningful feedback at every step of the development process. We are ready to expand that program in a massive way with our fans around the world via our COH-Development Program, which has been made possible by Amplitude Studios’ fantastic Games2Gether platform.”
Don’t forget to grab the very latest Company of Heroes updates by following us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube , Discord and Twitter.
http://www.companyofheroes.com/
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... Rebooting...
I mean YES! YES!
There are not enough BIG YESES FOR ME TO SAY!
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Also, Eastern front - about time we saw some more of that instead of the overused Europe/pacific fronts.
Really looking forward to more infoz.
they also made a great choice on setting.
This makes me super nervous as someone who played DoW2.
It worked really, really well in CoH.
As someone who's played the tar out of DoW2, the reason the cover system occasionally got caught up on itself was primarily because it was a game with melee units, and played on (relative to CoH) smaller maps and at closer ranges. This made things like cover auto-seek a pain at times because your units would seek cover by heading towards those nasty melee units heading your way.
Largely fixed now, but it could really end you at the worst times. Even though a lot of the mechanics were lifted from CoH, they had to go through a long period of reworking, purely because of the fact that DoW2 has a heavy emphasis on melee units, which pretty much changes the whole dynamic. Throw in the extra lethal nature of the combat (squad wipes are FAR easier in DoW2, and with the smaller number of squads, often a lot more damaging), and you've got a mix for a whole load of problems.
So yeah, basically CoH side-steps those issues by default. At the very least without melee units, things like suppression mechanics and cover work a lot better without having to rig in a dozen different exceptions and tweaks.
EDIT: On a more general topic though, what worries me most about the prospect of CoH 2 is actually the graphics. One of the big problems that CoH had is that it was simply too system intensive for its market at the time, it priced itself outside of what a lot of people were able to play at a decent visual level and framerate. DoW2 released several years later, but was roughly as hardware intensive as CoH. By the time it had released, people had systems to match, and that's a part of the reason it did fairly well in comparison.
If they go overboard on the visuals (and I'd personally say they don't really need to push things too far at all really), they could end up with a repeat of the same problem.
But for reals though, CoH was good times. Even when it came out, I was pretty sick of WW2 shit, but the level of detail in an RTS blew me away and convinced me that this was the future of RTS. (The existence of Starcraft 2 later single-handedly refuted that thought.)
And it's about time they put in some god-damned Russians. If there's no anti-tank dog somewhere in there, I'll be a bit sad.
Actually, I wonder if CoH is going to be decent fodder for e-sports and casting. Relic would certainly do well to at least try and accommodate such things with their interface and online systems.
I like watching Starcraft 2 matches, but I don't really enjoy playing it. I enjoy Relic games a whole lot, and play DoW2 a whole lot, but DoW2 is either too compacted to make for good casts (1v1), or far too chaotic to follow (3v3). CoH on the other hand, is perfect fodder for this, slow paced enough that you have pauses in the action, but still fast paced enough and fun to watch when the action kicks in, with plenty of depth to the tactics and overall strategy of the game, and lots of scope for on-the-fly tactical changes and heroic squad plays.
Sounds awesome. I assume it means the fog is lifted only over your units' field of vision, allowing you to surprise someone from the flank without them being alerted to it by eyes in the back of their heads like in most strategy games. Also, tanks without commanders peaking out of the top would only be able to see out small cones.
I wonder if that will be awkward control wise though. Like, will you have to micromanage so that one guy is always checking the squad's rear, or maybe that will just be automatic.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Actually, the whole "true-sight" thing sounds extremely reminiscent of Men of War, which from how they're describing it, worked the same way. You only knew about what your units saw, and that made sightlines extremely important, you didn't just have a blob of circular vision.
This is just speaking of experience of the demos (and limited experience from the main, first game), but from what I played, in the original Men of War this did feel pretty tedious to me. When I played Assault Squad though I felt it was handled much better, your units didn't seem to have extreme tunnel vision so I didn't feel I was being flanked from ridiculous angles and extremely short ranges.
In any case yeah, this sounds like Men of War's approach to vision.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
I KISS YOU!
And six years of development time has been spent on it - though I'm sure at least half has been pre-production. You don't often see that level of commitment in this industry anymore.
might need to finally upgrade my computer though, can only just run CoH 1
Gonna play it
Gonna shoutcast it
Hopefully gonna love it
DoW II was extremely good in its own way, but also very messed up in a lot of ways. The whole "let's rebalance the entire game" thing they did was pretty stunning. I never enjoyed how they got rid of the cutoff mechanics from CoH, but obviously in CoH II we can expect to see that stuff back, so really, I'm excited.
Love me some CoH. Love me some Relic. Love me some Eastern Front.
One thing, and this may sound strange, but I'd like infantry to have combat knives. Make them do the exact same damage as guns, but when your troops and the enemy troops are literally one foot from each other, some melee animations would be cool. Maybe even on Shogun 2 melee animations cool. However, there isn't a difference between shooting someone and meleeing someone in terms of damage or use. Just a melee animation so I don't see guys with MP40's missing people 1 foot away three times and then finally hit. Usually they get close because of weird pathfinding the AI uses, but it still would be cool. Maybe Germans and Ruskii's can have bayonets.
Frankly, I'm nervous about Relic continuing to work with THQ under present circumstances, as they might be enticed to publish a variety of DLC content to help alleviate their financial woes. They've already set a trend with skin packs & wargear for Dawn of War Retribution. Would you want to see them charging for T-44 tanks, Katyusha rocket launchers, or MP maps as DLCs? Their antics with CoH Online and ToV's unlockable units does give cause for concern. Hopefully, they'd focus on polishing CoH2 to its highest quality, and revert to publishing standalone expansions (i.e. Opposing Fronts, Tales of Valor) instead.
Basically this. I'd say DoW2 suffers from being an experimental middle child between DoW 1 and whatever ends up being DoW3. They broke away from the more traditional RTS structure that DoW 1 had, but they did it by taking on a lot of mechanics from CoH, which didn't really work out so well because they had to rework everything in order to get it working properly.
It also hurt it that the game shifted focus in so many areas over the years. The "There is Only War" update that basically revamped the whole gameplay system and how it was focussed. The shift from balancing for 3v3 matches to balancing for 1v1. Completely dropping GFWL and remaking the multiplayer architecture in Steamworks.
I mean they were all fundamentally necessary decisions to make, and they were made to the game's benefit. But I'm hoping this means that they've learned all their lessons from DoW 2 and have a really clear idea on how DoW 3 is going to be working now.
Another thought: I'm guessing that CoH2 is probably going to be Steamworks driven, given that's what they went with for DoW2 in the end. At the very least it means I won't be spending hours running through consecutive, massive patch installs.
EDIT: Come to think of it, hasn't DoW3 also been slated to hit 2013?
That said, stop teasing my cock already and announce Homeworld 3 damnit!
In any case, in the original CoH they only allowed you access to the 'factions' that fought around that area. However, there does seem to be suggestion that there might be either an Africa or Pacific based element to the campaign, so you might still see the Japanese in.
In general though, I'd be really happy with them just starting off with just two sides and not trying to do more than that, at least not initially. Balance problems multiply quickly to ridiculous levels with each side added.
I don't need Poles, or Canadians, Italians. However, I feel there does need to be
Allies:
USA
Brits
Russia
Axis:
Wehrmacht
Japanese
(Maybe Panzer Elite or get rid of them for Italians)
3vs3 factions sounds good to me.
Edit: Although, for extra awesomeness, I want the captain of Able company at the end of COH1 to have Vodka with the characters of CoH2. He didn't leave much of an impression, but it would still be cool. Also if the Brother's in Arms characters make an appearance.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
I got to the end of the tutorial a while back then a Sherman blew up something so hard that my computer restarted.
I so hope the T-34 tank driver shits his pants half as well as the Sherman tank driver does when he sees a tiger tank. Really looking forward to this game, I always and I mean *always* wanted Russians in CoH. Now I've finally got what I wanted!