Company of Heroes 2 Information

Can't wait....actually I still have to finish CoH 1 lol but I love this game.  I've played hundreds of hours of Starcraft 2 and only handful of CoH but I think I'm a bigger fan CoH (at least as a player - I love SC2 as a spectator sport).

From GameSpy

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Other than being set on the Eastern Front and some spiffy graphical enhancements, Company of Heroes 2 looks a lot like the original Company of Heroes. I couldn't be happier about that. Don't get me wrong -- I enjoy what Relic did with Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2, which is as much an action RPG as it is a real-time strategy game -- but I'd hate to lose what made Company of Heroes awesome to experimentation, however bold.

I'm dreaming of a white WWII RTS.

So here's what you can expect from Company of Heroes 2: more of Relic's awesome take on capture-point-based real-time strategy. The engine enhancements aren't just visual, though -- several have major effects on gameplay. For example, moving soldiers through snow makes them much slower, and they leave tracks. This will make roads a more attractive option -- and thus much more likely to be mined by the enemy. Also, unit vision has been revamped so that they can no longer see through solid objects, so you won't know what's waiting behind that wall until your men put eyes on it. Plus there are some seemingly minor things, like soldiers being able to vault over low walls and sandbags and burning down houses to deny the enemy cover, that will change tactics up considerably.

The Good-ish Guys?

The campaign follows the Soviet army repelling the German invasion, recreating the bloodiest conflict in human history. Of course, that means you'll be fighting for Stalin, (and the demo Relic showed wasted little time in getting to the part where the Russians open fire on their own soldiers to discourage retreat,) but Relic says the focus of the story will be on common soldiers defending their homeland, not fighting for the communist ideology.

If we can't have it, no one can.

Balancing details haven't been nailed down yet, but Relic says we can expect the Soviets to use their manpower advantage to counter the Germans' tech. However, since this all takes place before the Normandy invasion that kicked off Company of Heroes, the German army you'll fight won't have many of the advancements from the latter years of the war, including the King Tiger, so they should have a somewhat different flavor than the original German army factions.

If you're hoping to play as the western factions, you're out of luck for the moment -- though Relic wouldn't comment on plans for multiplayer, so it's possible the old factions could make an appearance, historically inaccurate as it might be.