14 DAY TRIAL // Quinn Duffy, who is a designer working on Company of Heroes 2, has stated that the game would be more tactical than other strategy titles and that it would not emphasize high action-per-minute counts and quick reflexes.
Speaking to Joystiq, the developer said, “We want to be rewarding smart players.”
He added, “To play Company of Heroes 2 you need to play smart and be aggressive in your decision making. We want smart players to be able to maximize the value of their units. A guy playing smart with his defenses and his cover and his movement, you want him to beat up on a guy with three squads.”
The biggest hit in the strategy genre at the moment is the Blizzard-made Starcraft II and much of its popularity is linked to the multiplayer component, where the players with the quickest reaction times and the ability to issue the most orders per minute are usually the winners.
Company of Heroes has been known for a more tactical approach to war and the first game in the series focused on offering unit counters that players could employ in order to defeat a poorly conceived offensive.
Company of Heroes 2 moves the action to the Eastern Front and focuses on the battles between the Wehrmacht and the Russian Army, with a lot of importance given to the way weather and terrain influence the engagements.
The new game also has a new re-designed core engine and the entire unit roster has been re-created in order to make the game even more oriented towards small group tactics.
Gamers will get two campaigns in the original release, focusing on the historical battles that the two sides fought, and a deep multiplayer mode.
Company of Heroes 2 will launch exclusively on the PC at some point during 2013.