Relicnews: the definitive source for all things Relic

TotalVideoGames has an interview with Sean Dunn.

When we first told hardcore RTS gamers that the squad AI will take cover for you, they said “We don’t want them to do anything that they haven’t been told to do”. So striking a balance of what they do, how far they travel to take cover, has been definitely difficult. Some of the hardest of the hardcore players still don’t want anything to move until they’re told to do so, but since we have some of the best RTS players in the world actually working on the product at Relic, there’s a balanced team made up of players who have to have been one of the top ten players in one of the core RTS titles in the last six years. We think we’ve hit a good balancing act between new players who need that visual return, they need their soldier to not be stupid, and they need their tanks to go through walls and not drive a mile down the road to come back. When we started solving those problems that we felt were keeping the general public out, those hardcore RTS players who didn’t want that thought “That’s cool…actually that makes it better”. We feel pretty good about that.

Thanks to Commissar[PT] for pointing it out.

Gamespot posted their fourth Designer Diary featuring Relic designer, Blaine Smith. It goes over some of the German arsenals that will be in Company of Heroes. Here is a quick snip from the article,

German soldiers in Company of Heroes will have access to all sorts of powerful weapons, including Nebelwerfers (rocket launchers), remote-controlled bombs with treads, and ballistic rockets. That’s in addition to the feared German tanks, some of the biggest and most powerful of the war. Designer Blaine Smith was good enough to tell us how these weapons can be employed in the game, as well as how you might counter them.

You can check out the article here. A video is also included with the article as well. Discuss here!

Relic’s resident giant and General Manager, Ron Moravek, has been interviewed by Gamesindustry.biz.

Here’s a nice meaty quote to snag your interest (there’s a couple of these in there).

You mentioned World of Warcraft previously, which as you said has been hugely successful - is that an area you’re interested in? Could we see an MMO coming out of Relic?


I can’t really see us doing an MMO. What I can see us doing, and this comes back to what you were asking earlier - with Company of Heroes we’re launching Relic Online. And one of the things we want to do with Relic Online is bring a Dawn of War persistent campaign.


So it’s not what you’d traditionally see with an MMORPG, but we might bring a real time strategy game and do that in a massively multiplayer persistent campaign. It’s delivering a massively multiplayer experience, but maybe not in the same genre. So yes, I think there are opportunities there, but there are huge challenges with making an MMO.

A persistent campaign for Dawn of War! WOW! But read the article, there’s a bunch of other great tidbits in there.

Thanks to Pyros at Planet Company of Heroes for the heads up.

Moony from GameReplays.org posted some interviews with Buggo, CeeJayOz, Pyros, TheGoodEvil, and TheMystic. Very good reads especially if you want to know about the folks that help the community running. You guys/girls can check out the forum post with all the links here.

Allie’s posted some concept art for CoH up at Ablecompany.net.

Ohhh Bastogne in the game???

Allie’s posted a poll and thread asking for more ideas prior to starting interviews with select Relic staffers.

Pop on by and tell her what you want to see!

This contains HUGE spoilers, but the Blur produced Introductory CGI opening movie is up on Youtube.

If you REALLY want to wreck the opening intro, go watch it. It’s up there with the Dawn of War intro… can’t wait to see it in HD. There’s a discussion thread here.

Soulblighter fan Dorkdav has posted an interview with Buggo, Relic’s new Community Liaison.

I’ve also been surprised at how passionate people are about their favorite races and units. Nothing like getting a PM on my first day that says, “IG are imba! Nerf SM! What is the Tau special unit?”…… haha. But so far it has been awesome.

Spotted on Evilavatar.com that Major Nelson is reporting that previously released Collateral Damage set of downloadable content is now free (down from 500 points).

Thanks to Commissar[PT] for finding this Company of Heroes video interview with Relic Senior Graphics Programmer Ian Thompson and Lead Designer Josh Mosqueira.

Discuss it here!