The DeanBeat: Scratching the Surface with Company of Heroes 3

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During the recent Gamescom show in Germany, I had the chance to play another preview of Company of Heroes 3, where my mission was to take over a German-controlled airfield during the Italian campaign of the Second World War. Afterwards, I was able to interview Steve Mele, Executive Producer at Relic Entertainment, about the latest details of the ongoing development.

The real-time strategy game will be released by Sega and Relic on PC via Steam on November 17, and it looks pretty neat. My job in the demo was to take over an airfield, and I barely entered it before I had to move on to my upkeep. I also played another demo where I was pretty much wiped out. If I showed you this one on video, it would be as laughable as my 2017 performance on Cuphead. With only about half an hour at Gamescom, I was only scratching the surface of this game.

I guess I'll have to get used to putting my head back in this game, especially when playing multiplayer against expert strategists. But it's the kind of game that is learned little by little. Compared to my previous demo, I felt like I had a better understanding of how to navigate the strategy map. I flew a few reconnaissance aircraft missions over the airfield and discovered the difficult defences. I bombarded them with planes and executed a fire mission against them from my battleship. It softened them up pretty nicely without depriving me of resources for other campaign targets.

But when I went into battle, it was unpredictable. It's quite easy to encounter German armor and infantry that will only tear your squads apart. And that's what I love about this version of Company of Heroes, which I've been playing since the series started in 2006. It's been over eight years since Company of Heroes 2 debuted in 2013 with a setting from the Russian front. Event

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I can say that I will be happy to put many hours into this game when it comes out. I spoke with Mele about the little touches Relic has brought to the game since previous demos.

Here is an edited transcript of our interview.

Steve Mele is Executive Producer utive on C Company of Heroes 3 at Relic Entertainment.

GamesBeat: Have you been on the project the whole time?

Steve Mele: Almost all the time. I've been with Relic for four years...