The cold logic of 'Company of Heroes 2'

Company of Heroes 2 remains an impressive technical showcase, which assists in developing a sense of ambiance and place. The cold isn't just an invisible modifier applied to units behind the scenes — it's an oppressive presence, visible in the fog of every soldier's breath, in the lonely death of the last remaining member of a unit in the cold.

Meanwhile, other aspects of the Company of Heroes design philosophy remain. Fires aren't reinforcement points for squads, and mechanized infantry, like half-tracks, will still be necessary to keep soldiers on foot alive and reinforced.

The new game also represents a chance to better capture the terrifying presence of armor and ordinance on the battlefield. "We're trying to capture the sort of fear and fearsome nature of these weapons. They were psychological killers as well." McDermott demonstrates a returning unit from Company of Heroes, the BM-13 Katyusha. The Katyusha, Duffy explains, was capable of laying down several football fields worth of destruction, a "politically reliable weapon."

"The Germans were deeply afraid of these things," Duffy explains as McDermott's Katyusha barrage demonstrates the ice component of Relic's cold tech, taking out the frozen lake and sending most of the German tanks crossing it to the bottom. Frozen bodies of water present one of the bigger tactical risk-reward scenarios to be added in Company of Heroes 2. Ice thickness and strength is modeled realistically, as is repeated stress to that surface. While on-foot infantry and light mechanized infantry can generally cross ice without a problem, tanks are another matter entirely. The updated engine behind the game allows each tank's treads to cause damage specific to the vehicle's weight.

What does this mean? In a scenario set around 1941, when the Russian KV-1 reigned "as the first true super-tank," as Duffy puts it, enterprising players might use the behemoth to wreak havoc in the enemy's base, and then pull back across the ice in a ploy to trap the inevitable counterattack on less than solid ground — the exact scenario that played out with McDermott's Katyusha gambit. But a good defensive perimeter and smart play could strand that KV-1 on the ice, or destroy the ice right underneath it.

Or anti-tank infantry might flank the KV-1 and score an "abandon critical," which will send the crew inside fleeing for their lives out of the vehicle. Combat engineers can then repair and field the enemy unit, which, as any Company of Heroes veteran will probably tell you, could reverse the entire course of a skirmish. The abandonment system has led Relic to beef up vehicles in Company of Heroes 2, which could change battle strategies over time as players devise new tactics in multiplayer.

But even vehicles aren't immune to the effects of the weather. Blizzard conditions will prevent air vehicles from engaging targets and cause ice to refreeze more quickly, and more damningly for mechanized infantry and armor, their movements will be obvious to any player paying even the smallest amount of attention to their surroundings, courtesy of permanent, dynamically generated tread marks. Infantry leave tracks as well, though inclement weather sounds like it might eventually disguise them.

When I ask Duffy if there's any concern internally that matches might not last long enough for these kinds of visual cues to make much of a difference, he didn't seem especially concerned. "It's actually really apparent early on," he tells me. "When you're just starting and scouting, you'll come across stuff."

But Relic isn't done fine-tuning all the ways weather will affect troop movements and general effectiveness. "We're still working on how (weather might affect visibility)," Duffy clarifies, bringing up the new Truesight mechanic, which masks player visibility according to obstacles. "We had it where a blizzard would reduce the sight radius of the troops, but it wasn't noticeable, because the changing effect was too constant. I'd rather have something more dynamic, so we're still working on it."

And Relic is still fine-tuning exactly how much of a part weather will play when Company of Heroes 2 ships next year. "We have full control of (weather), and we can make it cyclical, or truly random. We can also key it to events — maybe as technology increases the blizzard comes in."