For one, the campaign now features a turn-based overworld map, a la Total War or XCOM, lending a strategy layer to its famed tactical skirmishes. Relic released COH3 in a “pre-alpha” phase last summer for good reason: It breaks from series tradition in big ways. We recognize that with RTS games, when you come out, you have to be innovative and you have to be fully polished.” But of course, we’re also trying to expand the audience a bit. “With Company of Heroes 3, what we’re trying to do is bring back anyone who’s ever played a Company of Heroes game. “There’s no doubt that there are ebbs and flows in any genre,” David Littman, executive producer at Relic, told me. Developer Relic Entertainment released a playable pre-alpha preview of Company of Heroes 3 in July, a shade more than eight years after Company of Heroes 2. It’s poetic then that Company of Heroes, widely considered to be one of the best RTS franchises ever made, is re-emerging now. With the resounding success of Age of Empires IV just a couple of months ago, it’s safe to say that RTS games have been building toward something of a moment. Survival sims, zombie games, and stealth titles have all borrowed from real-time strategy to make something wholly new, with throwbacks and remasters garnering widespread acclaim. But while the RTS scene has become more fragmented and eclectic, it has also become more flexible and refined. It’s tempting to say that the genre “died” in the years following Blizzard’s sequel, with shrinking sales and dwindling esports interest. It was a period marked by robust multiplayer offerings and big-budget campaigns, beginning - although there is some dispute - with Age of Empires in 1997, and culminating with the release of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty in 2010. In 2006, Company of Heroes was released during the golden age of real-time strategy games.

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