There's a big nasty Catch-22 to creating a successful franchise: What happens when it's time to make a sequel? Fan comments usually produce a babbling crosstalk that could best be summed up by the phrase "make it exactly the same but completely different." Some developers just throw up their hands and keep milking a franchise until it's spent (I'm looking at you, Tomb Raider!). Then there's Relic Entertainment. Whether they succeed or fail, they're doing their level best to make a great game experience. That's the attitude that came across loud and clear during my conversation with Tim Holman, Senior Producer for Tales of Valor, the latest standalone expansion for the terrific Company of Heroes franchise.
"When you work on a sequel or an expansion, you can either re-skin the old game or do something completely different," Holman said. According to Holman, the team is very much aware of the buzz that surrounds their games (no surprise there, as both the original Company of Heroes and its immediate predecessor Dawn of War were a big shot in the arm for the RTS genre), and the chatter that swirls regarding the radical shift Tales of Valor brings to the franchise. "In the end, though, you have to weigh the pros and cons and make a decision. It came down to the fact that we've already made the original Company of Heroes and now we want to take it in a different direction."
Tales of Valor is a standalone expansion pack that will not require the original game or the Opposing Fronts expansion pack to play. The big bullet-point feature is several short campaigns that allow players to get intimately involved with their soldiers through the new "Direct-fire" mode. "Both the original game and the expansion had normal base-building campaigns," Holman said. "They were a lot of fun, but when you experience them as a narrative, there's just something lacking. You would forget who the characters were halfway through. We wanted to do that better." Their solution was to give players a single unit and challenge them to try and keep them alive in the midst of the chaos of war. The first campaign has players guiding the crew of a Tiger tank through an assault on a small French town. The second tells the story of the La Fierre causeway, a brutal battle where 112 men ran across a bridge and only one survived. The final campaign puts players behind a Pioneer where they get to burn... well, according to Holman, "Everything."
One of my questions was whether Tales of Valor might be such a radical break from the gameplay of Company of Heroes that it might not appeal to fans of the original game. Without a new side to play, what exactly is the value proposition for the long-time CoH fan... especially the ones who regularly slaughter each other every night on the Internet? Holman seems mindful of this concern and points to two other elements that should appeal to long-time fans.
"They'll certainly want to try out the game's new multiplayer modes," he says. These three new modes include "Operation Assault," a "Defense of the Ancients"-style game in which two to eight players command one unit each while fighting with a large AI force to destroy the opposing base. "Operation Panzerkrieg" has two to six players each controlling one "class" of tank with its own unique abilities and upgrades. Players can call in AI-controlled troops and compete for control of Victory Points. Finally "Operation Stonewall" has one to four players working together to defend a small town against wave after wave of assaulting enemies.
For those who like the original base-building big army scrums, they'll get some love in the form of eight new units (two per side) that Holman believes should throw a nice wrench in tried-and-true multiplayer strategies. "We do listen to our fans," Holman said. "When we sat down to decide what to add in the expansion we looked long and hard at the kinds of strategic holes both side had and the kinds of abilities players were asking for. Then we found real vehicles that would fill those niches. I'm pretty proud of how they turned out." One of Holman's favorites is the new Schwimmwagen Type 166, an amphibious scout car with better armor that can move in reverse. "You have no idea how many players have asked for some sort of alternative to the motorcycle," he said brightly.
There's no denying that Relic is taking a risk with Tales of Valor. With the radical break it's envisioning for Dawn of War II, Tales of Valor could end up alienating as many fans as it pleases. Holman doesn't see the work on the two games as necessarily related, though. "We all influence each other but I think Dawn of War II takes the concepts of 'roles' much further than we did." He also believes that as a standalone expansion, Tales of Valor has something to offer to both new players and veterans. "If this was just an expansion with some new units, that wouldn't be much of a value," he said. "There's lots of stuff here that everyone will appreciate. If you're a new player, you get access to all four armies in multiplayer in addition to the single-player campaign, and if you're an old fan, you get to experience the Company of Heroes universe in a whole new way."
