Company of Heroes 2 - Eastern Front impossible on original engine, says Relic

Company of Heroes 2 explores the wintry landscapes of the Eastern Front, something Relic has always wanted to do but never had the tech for.

Designer Quinn Duffy told PCGamesN that Relic has been thinking about the Eastern Front since Company of Heroes launched in 2006.

“In that six years there were a number of cases where we looked at the game, at what we were going to do, and we didn’t get to the point where we had the technology we wanted, or the systems to drive the development, to tell the kind of story we wanted to about the Eastern Front," he said.

“We looked at doing an expansion pack, an Eastern Front expansion pack for the original, but we couldn’t do the snow, we couldn’t do the breaking ice, we couldn’t do the cold weather stuff in the original game engine.”

Previews have raved about Company of Heroes 2's "ColdTech"; snow builds in drifts over time, melts away, and shows footprints which gradually fill as fresh snow falls. The strategy sequel is due in early 2013.