The Failure of Company of Heroes (And Why There Is Hope!)

AHHHHH I CALLED PETROGLYPH STUDIOS PARADOX CALL IT OFF THE VIDEO IS RUINED

Blah Blah Links To Stuff:

0:00 - Intro
0:42 - Campaign
14:30 - Skirmish
17:25 - Antonio Vivaldi publishes The Four Seasons
21:49 - The patch that saved everything! (But mostly your credit card information to Sega's servers)
23:55 - IT WAS REALLY COOL ALMOST FINISHING THIS VIDEO AND HAVING IT CONSTANTLY DELAYED BECAUSE MORE AND MORE NEW INFORMATION KEPT COMING OUT. I REALLY LIKED THAT. IT MADE PRODUCTION SO EASY AND SMOOTH.
24:38 - 🪸🐍🪸🐍🪸🐍🪸🐍🪸🐍🪸🐍🪸🐍🪸🐍🪸🐍🪸🐍
25:43 - The Future of Company of Heroes

[siaal]

It's wild that the game was so undercooked that they couldn't even jam in the cash store on release

[justsomebody]

“There were actually 2 world wars” -Grant

This line is so funny to me for some reason.

[cobaltroselazuli]

Your description of the campaign would be a near-exact summary of the American campaign from Company of Heroes 2, Ardennes Assault, which came out in late 2014. Everything from "The AI doesn't actually play the random objectives" to "one of the four Companies you can play as is locked behind a separate, poorly-rated dlc" (seriously, they pulled this crap then too). How did Relic look at Ardennes Assault and go "Yeah, We should release a full-priced game that's as bad as this dlc, and make a dlc for that game's campaign that is overpriced as all hell and also one of the very first things a player sees"?

[muffintop]

The Red Alert 3 campaign was entirely co-op. It was one the better things about that game. Seems kinda wild they didn't learn from that game and team you up with a partner, AI or otherwise.

[Jaszs]

The "store in the first patch" move is very common, actually. You push the update AFTER the most important reviews and preorders so it has overall better reviews

[hilkmeister]

My only concern for Relic's future is 2 things:
1) Relic's leadership (they could have been responsible for all of the issues and if nothing else they are complicit with the issues)
2) Brain Drain (they have lost a lot of people and I doubt anyone from their golden age is still around).

[Jasonwolf]

I mean the montecasino mission could have a bear unit, so the lack of Wojtek is proof they dont have any idea how to have fun with it.

[Aeliasson]

8:11 When the game released, encounters on the campaign map gave you the option to autoresolve or play the skirmish for bonus xp. Now it's autoresolve only, so one less option.

[CrowCZ]

That terrible audio is really unfortunate because previous games (especially CoH 1) had great audio implementation and balancing (including great music). They obviously spent ton of time on audio alone in older games. Even in 4v4 games it was never just a glob of sound like you showed in the video.

[srtfrostbite]

Relic seems to have a problem with number 3. First it was Dawn of War 3, now CoH3 is crashing and burning.

[ChannelMiner]

They mustve contracted little timmy to be the enemy AI.

[TrollPrince]

great video as always but a quick note - the ww1 rts (great war western front) had no involvement from paradox. it was made by petroglyph (of empire at war / command and conquer remaster fame) and published by frontier (of planet coaster / zoo fame)

[Lordblow]

When you came with those C&C nit sounds I thought "let's put it to the test, can I tell what every unit is from memory just by the sound." The answer, yes. Though I must admit I forgot what the jetpack guys are called. The lightning sounds are also so delightfully iconic.

[MoonLight-zjiu]

I just wanted a CoH Pacific Campaign man...

[CodjHD]

Larian Studios with Baldurs Gate 3 has that a studio can be incredibly successful if the studio is not greedy and just gives the players a game they want to play, no micro transactions or locked content, a 60$ game with easily 100 hr of content. But the big difference is that game does not work with short term profit in mind but community building and longterm sustainability which goes against public companies having investors which in turn push for profit and dont care about the product of longevity of the company!

[Snordix]

It's insane how cartoony and clean this game looks compared to the first CoH1, specially the particle effects and explosions; which tbh isn't that surprising coming off DoW3. The art direction in the first game was so good and satisfying + also the sound design and voice acting was absolutely top notch, it's sad seeing them fall off this hard.

[coruscanta]

Grant, I cannot compliment your work on videos like this enough. The retrospectives, the reviews, the challenge runs - the scripting, voice work, and footage editing all come together so well.

The style of humor works for me so well, and the way you focus on the positives and optimistic angles while also not shying away from being critical where and when and how it’s appropriate works so well. The nods to the great experiences of hand crafted missions coupled with direct compliments to the devs who worked on those while expressing criticism and confusion about the state of the other parts of the game.

I don’t know if you’ll end up reading this but if you do I hope you’ll know that your time and work and style is greatly appreciated. I hope for the absolute best for you going forward. 😊

[conradwerth]

At this point, I want Grant to take a look at Relic's other games, specifically the original Dawn of War: WH40K games, from the first up through Soulstorm. All four were great games for the time, though I honestly believe that Winter Assault was the best, in part because it wasn't a bunch of skirmishes on multiplayer maps and then a number of scripted missions for each stronghold. Those scripted missions are always difficult and fun, with insane enemy numbers, extra objectives to find either bonuses or to take away enemy tech, and awesome set pieces, such as the Titan's gun on the Imperial Guard stronghold in Dark Crusade.

Maybe it's not up Grant's alley, I understand not everyone enjoys WH40K. But I think it would be good to take a look at the games that lead up to this game, especially since you can see where Relic got the idea for the campaign in this compared to a more heavily scripted campaign like the first two Dawn of War games.

[ErikaWeiss]

Funny thing you've mentioned Sega firing a lot of employees: Relic wasn't the ones that got axed the most, that was CA. At least a third, 240 employees laid off, several of their studios closed, and Sega execs going in and pretty much dictating what they're gonna make. It was bad.

[andrew_wow]

I saw a comment on some video that the mechanics would work for a pacific, island -hopping campaignThis would not only fix the issue of the game having less exciting units, but also it could be cool seeing the fanatasism of Japaneese growing with more island you get, which would be like that game about czech legion fighing through all of Russia to get home