I still remember the PC Gamer cover from October 2006 featuring Company of Heroes as the vanguard of the "RTS Revolution." This was back in the day that I would walk down to the local grocery store to grab each new physical issue off of the news stand. I had just turned 17. I was already failing trigonometry. And in my free time, I was building a lightsaber hilt out of parts from the hardware store for Halloween… and trying to keep my airborne troops alive behind German lines on my first proper gaming PC.
At Relic Entertainment in Vancouver that same fall, as one designer recalled, Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries' played over the PA system as part of a ritual when one of their games finally went gold. I didn't encounter anything quite that dramatic when I visited earlier this summer to talk with the team about the 20th anniversary of the franchise, but even through all the ups and downs, I did find myself surrounded by people very excited to be making a World War 2 RTS.
A lot of the earliest history of the franchise has been scattered to the wind, unfortunately. The genesis of the idea, I was told, was a story only recalled by a small number of people who have since moved on from Rel...
English (US)