Surprisingly, Company of Heroes 3 still gets a real story campaign. That”s actually very good, but we still worried.
Company of Heroes and other games set in the Second World War are to blame for the fact that I often find myself struggling nervously for words. And that”s always when people ask me why I actually still like to see the scenario. Because what is the most appropriate way to answer that? “Because I like the Second World War” certainly isn”t.
Yet this sentence is true – at least in the context of an entertainment programme. I still find this conflict incredibly fascinating and am by no means bored by it. But of course I don”t like this period.
Now Company of Heroes 3, for which a new single-player campaign has just been unexpectedly announced, makes it even more difficult. And no, I don”t mean the sandbox that Relic already revealed about a year ago. There will actually be a second story campaign for the release on 17 November 2022, as we know from previous offshoots of the renowned RTS series.
What have we seen?
I was invited to a digital event by publisher Sega. Here the development team introduced me to a new part of Company of Heroes 3. I was also able to put a few hours into the first mission of the North Africa campaign. In addition, I spoke with two developers directly and was able to learn even more about their plans.
And in this campaign, I take control of the German Wehrmacht for the first time in a Company of Heroes story (apart from expansions). So far, the storyline in part one has focused on the US Americans, while part two has focused on the Soviet Union.
What do you say just as a German at a moment when this announcement is made? Do I think it is good? Do I think bad? I”ll hold back for now and say: I find it daring.
And that has not only to do with the role this army of the German Reich played in the Second World War. It also has to do with what kind of game Company of Heroes 3 becomes at the end of the day.
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There is a story after all … and that”s good!
It seems a little strange that the announcement of a story campaign for a Company of Heroes is a surprise. It”s much more the surprise itself that”s a surprise. Ok, it”s all a bit confusing. But the point is: fans of CoH 3 can breathe a sigh of relief. You”ll get your story campaign, just like you know it from before. With several missions that are connected by cutscenes. Quite classic, in other words. And that”s good news!
In this case, the campaign is set in the war in North Africa. Company of Heroes 3 therefore remains in the Mediterranean region, even if the sandy Africa is very different from the more vertical battlefields in Italy, where the originally announced sandbox campaign takes place.
As mentioned at the beginning, the focus is on German soldiers and their General Erwin Rommel. However, he did not make an appearance in the one campaign mission that I was able to play. In general, the whole mission was surprisingly shallow and the gameplay was rather RTS standard. First I had to fight free Italian units that had been captured, then I was allowed to recruit units at a pre-built base and had to conquer three command points. The last one had to be defended again.
You”ve seen this a hundred times before, but it was only the very first campaign mission. The only really new and exciting features were the newly announced gameplay features:
New announced gameplay features
That”s why the story is a big gamble
Just because CoH 3 didn”t completely knock my socks off gameplay-wise now, I”m not worried, by the way. That has completely different reasons. Because of course Company of Heroes can tell exciting RTS campaigns. That is well known and the development studio Relic also feels more comfortable here than Elvis Presley with a peanut butter banana sandwich in his hand. Relic, however, makes life pretty difficult for itself in this case. And there are two important reasons for that.
1. The subject matter
The first Company of Heroes told a pathetic story around US soldiers. A story like we have seen many times before. Be it in “Saving Private Ryan”, “Band of Brothers” or even Call of Duty. Such a story of sacrifice, brotherhood and a spark of heroism can of course cause its own problems in such a morally complex environment as war. But in the end, a studio rarely does badly by building up the Wehrmacht and the Nazi government as an obvious enemy image.
In Company of Heroes 3, Relic cannot rely on this form of narrative. When we conquer North Africa alongside a General Rommel with German soldiers, there is little room for pathos. Relic has to think very carefully about how they want to tell their story.
And they can do that. Illuminating the war from the Soviet Union”s side was no easy feat either. But Relic did not shy away from opening more complex moral barrels at that time. The brutal war tactics of the Russian army were given a much more cynical touch.
With the Wehrmacht, a different kind of tact is called for. Relic does not want to become careless here and produce a historically distorted picture. Clean Wehrmacht? War without hatred? The noble General Rommel? All propagandistic images to be avoided.
2. implementation
Precisely because this theme is complex, Relic chooses a somewhat different path in its staging. Actually, Company of Heroes 3 tells two stories. One is about the advance of the DAK (German Africa Corps) to Egypt and the other is about the consequences of this advance.
The cutscenes between the missions do not deal with the soldiers and generals we get to know during the gameplay. Instead, we accompany a local Jewish family in these little films. We thus see directly how our war affects the civilian population.
A level that is often left out of war games. The question here, however, becomes whether Relic nevertheless skilfully combines gameplay and story in this way. The danger is that a break will occur and the campaign will lose traction without a direct narrative element away from the missions. Is a glimpse into the life of this family enough to heighten the tension in the military missions, or do they then lack emotional scope? That remains to be seen.
Even though I was able to play the first mission of the campaign, I haven”t seen anything of the cutscenes yet. So I don”t know how well the connection will work. But a trailer already shows roughly where the journey is going:
Will Company of Heroes 3 be too much?
Although I”m very excited about this new story campaign, I”m more worried after the replay session than before. And that has nothing to do with the fact that I had significantly less fun this time. From a purely gameplay point of view, CoH 3 doesn”t do much wrong. It is still action-packed and strategic, and its gameplay always manages to tell little stories that keep me glued to the screen.
In addition, there are definitely exciting gameplay improvements, of which even more are now known. Things like soldiers riding on tanks or the special crane vehicles of the DAK faction.
But I”m starting to worry that Company of Heroes 3 might be trying to do too much. In the meantime, Relic seems to be loading quite a lot of ammunition here and is still trying to fight on all battlefields at the same time.
On the one hand, Company of Heroes 3 is supposed to offer a sandbox campaign that will keep even single players busy for months, instead of simply putting the game aside after the end of the story. At the same time, multiplayer remains an enormously important part of the game, after all, the most loyal core of the community lives here. In order not to offend anyone, there is also a classic story campaign.
And according to the developers, this should not be a half-baked add-on. They didn”t want to tell me exactly how extensive it will be, but if it is oriented towards the campaigns of the predecessors, you can expect at least 13 missions of about one hour each. That”s quite a lot of work, and even if Relic doesn”t exactly develop its games with ten people in their own attic, they”re asking a lot of themselves.
I really hope it all works out. Then CoH 3 will undoubtedly be a strategy highlight this year. But there are still too many unanswered questions in all areas. In the sandbox, it”s unclear how much variety each new playthrough really offers. In multiplayer, I don”t know if the balance is right with all the factions (there are four on release this time), and in the campaign I haven”t seen anything of the cutscenes yet. The one playable story mission also offered pretty standard RTS fare, so that wasn”t really unusual.
As I said: I”m actually totally enthusiastic about Ambition. But I”m still missing that one moment that contains a hint of true brilliance. Sure, that may come in the finished game. But experience also shows that the chance of this happening decreases as soon as the clear focus is missing.
Let”s hope Relic doesn”t divide its attention too lightly.
Editorial conclusion
Don”t misunderstand me. I am in no way trying to deny Company of Heroes 3 any competence. But I”ve played three different versions in the last year and each one has focused on a different area of the game. That makes sense, of course; after all, the studio and publisher want to make sure we capture every facet of this huge real-time strategy chunk. And I do love how much is in this game! Even though I”m really keen on the sandbox campaign, I was a little disappointed that the classic story campaign was sacrificed for it.
That”s why I”m actually in a positive mood. But I wish I had a better feeling for whether everything will work out in the end. After all, it”s not long until 17 November. Unfortunately, none of the three core modes has really inspired me yet. Each of them wasn”t rounded enough for that. And there you have the source of my current concern: I have the impression that Relic is overdoing it. I still don”t really believe that the studio can pull off a sandbox campaign and an extensive story campaign. My feeling is that one of the two will fall off a bit. And since the sandbox has convinced me more than the individual campaign missions so far, I”m spreading my scepticism in that direction for now.
But so far it”s just that: a feeling. It may well be that this impression is deceiving me and that we can expect a really well thought-out campaign with cleverly designed missions. But Relic hasn”t shown much of that yet.
