Interviews// Relic on Company of Heroes 2

We all remember the Great World War II Game Fatigue of the mid-2000s. It’s the reason why games such as Call of Duty and Medal of Honor were rebranded to focus on more contemporary conflicts. Relic is doing things a little differently though - rather than modernise the setting in Company of Heroes 2, it has decided to focus on the ‘forgotten theatre’ of World War II that was the Eastern Front.

You can see what I thought of the game as the studio presented the RTS sequel for the first time, by clicking here. Shortly after being impressed by the demonstration, I sat down with lead campaign designer Jason Torres to learn more about the philosophy behind the Eastern Front focus and how it can create a compelling experience that rivals first-person shooters.


SPOnG: Company of Heroes 2 is quite bold, in that it tells the story of the Eastern Front. This hasn’t really been explored in World War 2 computer games - why do you think that is?

Jason Torres: It’s an interesting question. I think most of us here in the West have been kind of saturated by the stories told by our grandfathers, and that those stories have become our viewpoint of history. So it’s an interesting bridge to kind of tap into something that we don’t necessarily talk about all that much in the West.

Another thing is that there are some realities of history which prevented those stories from being told. The Soviet Union was not an open culture with regards to sharing information, and so a lot of archives were hidden away and many professional historical writers weren’t really able to research things properly until the fall of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, we’ve known about the Normandy push and have had movies about that for decades.


SPOnG: So how did that affect your own research into that side of World War II? What kind of research was involved?

Jason Torres: The type of research that was involved... there are naturally books, there are all sorts of writers that have been involved in retelling those stories... we found stories of the writer that got to actually travel with several different armies across the span of the war. All sorts of information.

The effect it had on us was really exciting because everybody who has seen war movies and TV shows, like Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan, they have a very specific image of that conflict in their head. With Company of Heroes 2 and the Eastern Front, we actually had something new to bring. So it’s new stories, and new experiences. And that’s exciting because we get to tell these stories in a way that hasn’t been brought to the West in a game before, while including that Company of Heroes philosophy of really staying true to the authenticity of the experience.


SPOnG: Medal of Honor, Call of Duty and Battlefield - those games tell stories of war from an immersive first-person perspective. How challenging is it to create the same impression through a third-person, real time strategy viewpoint?

Jason Torres: Well, I think it affords us to tell the tale with a little more of an authentic experience. We don’t have to make sure that the player is kind of superhuman and be the one guy that shot five hundred baddies throughout a huge war.

In an RTS, it can be a little bit more realistic. You have lots of heroes on the battlefield, all playing their role. And so I think that affords us a certain amount of authority towards the type of narrative that we can tell. We can tell the story of a battle, not just the story of one guy. And I think that’s a big part of the experience that we bring.


SPOnG: One of the things that I noticed during the presentation by Quinn (Duff, Relic’s creative director), was that Company of Heroes players would tell each other stories from the experiences they had in a specific game. Obviously, you’re expanding that with the sequel - are there going to be features that can better facilitate the discussion of players after the game is done?

Jason Torres: Oh, absolutely, I hope so. One of the biggest things that will add to the conversation, I think, is going to be True Sight. There were parts - not just in Company of Heroes, but in lots of games - where you could see a unit, but you might not be able to shoot them. And it kinda feels a bit ‘gamey’ because of that rule.

Now, with True Sight, there are real ambushes. That’s amazing, and there’s going to be so many experiences where as you’re playing on a map or in a mission, you’re going to feel those experiences and you’re going to learn them.

In multiplayer you’re going to be able to turn that on another player. You could lay a soldier in a tight, narrow corridor, put an HMG by the corner out of sight, and use that against your opponent to stage a really meaningful ambush. And I expect that’s going to drive experiences of its own, just that one type of encounter.


SPOnG: It was said in the presentation that you wanted to tell the story of the Russian and German conflict from a sensitive standpoint. How challenging is it to do that? I’d imagine it would be quite easy to paint something of an anti-Nazi or anti-German sentiment to a World War II game.

Jason Torres: I think, really, for us the focus has always been on the soldiers. They’re the average guys, the heroes of the battlefield. And they’re not fighting necessarily for some big ideology, or for these monolithic leaders that are imposing on other people. They’re fighting for their families, their homeland, their people.

And we get in close - these guys in a squad with these other guys in a squad, fighting each other. And so I think that’s really what it is. We get in close. We keep the stories on the battlefield, and not on the layers above which gets into some aspects that a lot of people might not identify with. But, seeing the average guy on the battlefield, taking on his role to be a hero, is something that is tangible to everybody.


SPOnG: It’s interesting that there is so much effort going into improving the AI when most games - particularly of a historical warfare viewpoint - tend to lean more towards multiplayer development. How important is it to balance the single-player as well as improving multiplayer experience?

Jason Torres: Well the single-player portion of the game, which I consider everything from the campaign to skirmishes, is extremely important, and I believe the numbers would point to that being our biggest player constituency. I think it is for most games as well.

So it’s of massive importance, and the focus on AI to drive the experience is really out of wanting to bring the experience to that player in the best possible way. It’s the Relic mark of quality. And it’s also the way to utilise new features like True Sight. So using things like flanking... we want to make that available in single-player, and really we need better AI to do that.


SPOnG: Do you find that a lot of shooters and RTS games focus too much on the multiplayer over a good story? Do you think the single-player experience is being forgotten in this generation of games design?

Jason Torres: Well, for us, we really want to tell the stories. And it really derives from this Eastern Front experience, and not having these hallmarks in our culture of understanding what that was all about. It was a massive war - it wasn’t something that took place over six months. It took place over six years - the amount of people lost, the giant battles... these soldiers held on to what was literally ruins.

It’s an amazing story just in one battle, to take it into context of the whole war. That’s what gives us focus in single-player. That’s what makes us want to tell these stories, and we make that really important because we want to impart that onto the player.


SPOnG: One thing I noticed was how different in approach to warfare the Russians and Germans were. The Germans were technologically more advanced but the Russians really had nothing to lose as well as an understanding of their land. How interesting is it to create campaigns as a designer, around how those two sides fought?

Jason Torres: It’s really exciting, because it makes you rethink things like loss conditions. What is success? What exactly do we want to make the player experience? They’re going to lose a lot of troops. The Soviets did not do well out of the Eastern Front. How do we make the player experience that in ways that are actually satisfying? So it’s an opportunity to rethink the structure of missions.

Ultimately, players want to win, because it’s a gameplay challenge, so how do you have this dramatic, tonal, dark element and at the same time give them victory? That’s been really challenging and really exciting.


SPOnG: The first Company of Heroes game focused on the four months of the Normandy push. How would you describe the difference in designing a campaign for that, and what you’re doing with the Eastern Front here?

Jason Torres: One big way it’s different is that the Normandy push was really a story of a few companies and their follow-through, pushing from Normandy beach and making their way to Operation Market Garden. And so it’s a little bit more continuous in having some of the same characters, and some of the same troops.

Whereas the multiple battles spanning a much larger area of the Eastern Front, that’s just not possible. For one, it spans over six years, for another because of the lives lost and soldiers captured. The amount of times certain areas like Stalingrad changed hands is another issue. So it’s a different experience, in that it’s not going to be a continuous campaign focusing on one small group of soldiers. It’s going to be a collection of stories, of all these different battles over a scale of time.


SPOnG: Thank you very much for your time.

Jason Torres: You’re welcome.