Company of Heroes 3 Interview: How Relic Is Making Its Destructive WW2 RTS More Dynamic Than Ever

thegamer.com:

I'm playing an early build of Company of Heroes 3 and I've been ordered to take a captured airfield back from the Nazis. As I throw tanks and infantry at the enemy and pummel their territory with mortar strikes, the environment gets torn to shreds. WW2 RTS series Company of Heroes has always had genre-best destruction, but the third game takes this system to a whole other level. When the mission is over and the airfield is back in allied hands, I pan the camera across the battlefield and marvel at what an incredible mess I've managed to make.

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"Environmental dynamics are a pillar of the Company of Heroes series," says Sachin Ryan, lead single-player designer. "Destructible environments in the game include buildings you can garrison, which take damage over time and crumble and collapse. If this happens the soldiers inside will die. This time we have two types of building: ones that will collapse and become impassable, and others whose ruins will create permanent, indestructible cover you can use."

"Pretty much everything in the world is destructible. Trees, stone walls, fences, bridges, cars—you can blow everything up. But it's not just for show: it feeds into the gameplay too. If you destroy a tank, you can use it as cover. Artillery shells can hit the ground and create a crater, which also generates cover. We've had these dynamic elements before, but now everything is higher fidelity." Company of Heroes 3 has implemented a new physically based rendering system that brings an impressively fine level of detail to the destruction. "It vastly improves how the damage looks, like plaster breaking off first and revealing bricks underneath," says Ryan. "Then the