FEATURE WCOMPANY OF HEROES OFTEN
SEEMED MORE LIKE A SQUAD-
LEVEL WARGAME THAN AN RTSTotal Annihilation’s
unique approach to RTS
games in the 90s didn’t
lead to many imitators,
which is possibly why
Chris Taylor decided to
make a spiritual
successor to his own
game. Supreme
Commander took Total
Annihilation’s
foundation, and then
made it bigger. Huge. It
wasnowonderthatit
wasanearlyadopterofdual-screen support.
Recent years have seen
a greater yearning for a
Total Annihilation-style
game. Planetary
Annihilation, with its
conflicts taking place
across solar systems,
uppedthescale,butlost
something by trying to
appeal to the esports
crowd. 2016’s Ashes of
the Singularity was the
latest in the line, though
hopefullynotthelast.THE SUPREMES
harvester — the only way they could fix it was by
taking back that location, even if it seemed hopeless.
There was real drama behind the battles.
Company of Heroes heavily drew from Band of
Brothers, 2001’s HBO miniseries, and was thick with
the show’s atmosphere. The ruined countryside
and villages of Normandy were unlike any other
battlefields. Each map was elaborate, dynamic, and,
of course, incredibly dangerous, full of places for
snipers and mortar teams to hide. It was emotionally
resonant, too. The pockmarked roads, the destroyed
European towns, the terrified men trying to escape
machine gun fire — even when it was explosive and
exciting, a melancholy cloud loomed over everythin
It wasn’t enough to slow, let alone stop, the declin
of the RTS. There were still notable titles appearing,
but more often these were sequels and spiritual
successors. A year after Company of Heroes launche
we saw Total Annihilation resurrected in the form of
ABOVE:World in
Conflict lit a fire
underneath the
Cold War.
LEFT:StarCraft II sold
like no other RTS
before it, or since.g.
ne
,ed,
fSupreme Commander, designed by original creator
Chris Taylor, while Massive Entertainment followed up
Ground Control 2 with the superb World in Conflict.
RTS games were still alive, but only just. Today, the
most popular RTS is still StarCraft II, which launched
in 2010. Its excellent expansions and huge multiplayer
support are responsible for its longevity, and it helps
that it features some of Blizzard’s best mission design,
but it’s still very familiar.
Elsewhere in the strategy genre, people could
satisfy some of their turn-based cravings with Total
War, but empire-building wasn’t quite what it used
to be. Wargames had become a niche satisfied by a
few specialist publishers. In the 4X realm the long-
awaited sequel to Master of Orion II launched to
disappointed grumbling in 2003, and aside from a few
exceptions like Galactic Civilization, new titles became
increasingly hard to find.
There were bright spots amid the gloom. In
2005, Civilization IV saw designer Soren Johnson
re-evaluate everything, right down to the series’
foundations. Along with being the first 3D Civilization
game, it was also the first to be built from the ground
up as a multiplayer game. It introduced upgradable
units, a religion system, and more accessible modding,
giving it a second life as a platform for not just new
scenarios, but entirely new games. Civilization
IV marked the beginning of a new generation of
Civilization games, with its successors featuring even
bolder redesigns.
Carving out an empire didn’t have to take place
turn-by-turn, of course. Sins of a Solar Empire made