It's been a very busy year for Vancouver-based Relic Entertainment with three separate game released for their owner/publisher THQ. Yet it's their WWII RTS game Company of Heroes that has received the most critical acclaim with many critics naming it one of the best PC titles of 2006. FiringSquad got a chance to conduct a post mortem interview with Relic producer John Johnson about Company of Heroes to look back at the development of the game with hints about their future.

FiringSquad: First, Company of Heroes has received very solid reviews. Overall are you happy with the way that the game was received by the press and also by gamers?

John Johnson: We are very very happy at how well the game is being received. We were aiming very high with Company of Heroes as we wanted to pull out all the stops, and make the best damn game we could with the goal to push Relic into the Number 1 RTS slot. Company of Heroes is currently rated the best Real Time Strategy game and the 4th best PC game of all time on gamerankings. That’s making a lot of people at Relic & THQ very happy, it was well worth the effort.

FiringSquad: It was a bit of a risk to switch directions and create a WWII RTS game for Relic's next big PC project. Was there some concern from your side and from THQ's side that the final product might get lost in the many other WWII RTS titles?

John Johnson: We didn’t really feel that doing a WWII game was a big risk for us. We knew what we wanted to create, and we were all very passionate about the subject matter. The goal was to not only make the best WWII RTS out there, but to create the best RTS out there period, and in looking at the ratings we feel we’ve met both of those goals. The WWII space may be crowded, but it’s definitely not crowded with a lot of high quality titles. The ones that are good always sell well and will continue to do so despite what people are saying, which is why you’ll continue to see big publishers putting a lot of money into high quality WWII titles.

FiringSquad: The game was "M" rated which is unusual for a WWII RTS title. Was there some concerns that the rating might limit the audience of the game?

John Johnson: There were no real marketing or sales concerns in making Company of Heroes an M rated title. The vision we had for the product was to tell the story like it is, and not hold back on some of the more gritty and brutal aspects of that war and that meant that we’d have to accept an M rating. The vision just didn’t hold well to making this an E rated game.

FiringSquad: What were some of the surprises that happened during the game's development?

John Johnson: Wow, there were so many, but first I’d have to say the biggest surprise for some of us, was the move into parenthood with 7 new additions to the world (Congratulations again to those new parents). Probably my biggest surprise occurred when we produced our first E3 demo. I had some huge expectations for that show, and the team managed to really pull it all together and produce something that went way beyond my expectations for what we could pull together for that show. It really blew me away at how much passion the team had in getting that demo done. It also helped set the bar for the rest of production. Everything had to be that good or it wasn’t done. It was a great vision to continue to look at throughout development.

FiringSquad: Was it harder to develop a game with lots of historical research with all of the different units than a sci-fi title?

John Johnson: Actually, having historical data and a base to start with that everyone inherently understands makes it easier both for the developer and player. When you can instantly understand something it removes that learning curve or barrier to entry to the game. Everyone knows a bazooka is designed to blow things up and be used as an anti-tank device. It’s a bit trickier to handle that with Sci-Fi, but still can be done. Having access to historical data for the story and single player game also helped immensely as it gave us a lot of background and history to draw from in order to design our campaign.

FiringSquad: Some reviews of the game have commented that the AI of the vehicle movement could be better. What is your response to this?

John Johnson: We spent a large part of our development on our path-finding code, specifically for the squad AI and squad behavior as it was one of the most important key features of the product. We spent a lot of time on the vehicles as well but because vehicles are larger, they always present more problems with path finding than smaller units. Overall we were happy with where we were at with vehicle pathing, but that said we are always monitoring what the fans are concerned with and always looking for ways to improve things in future patches.

FiringSquad: Were there things in the final product that had to be dropped due to time and if so what were these content and features?

John Johnson: With Company of Heroes, we really wanted to ensure we shipped the product when we felt it was ready, when we felt we had hit all our targets for the product so in that since we didn’t need to drop a lot of features out of the game With any type of software development there is always a laundry list of features that you’d love to have, but a lot of these never make it into the product. The key is to ensure your working on the right ones, the ones that really matter to the player. One features that I wish we had had more time to work on would have been including Multiplayer maps, with specific missions and objectives wrapped around these. This was something we were excited about but just came up late in the process and we didn’t feel it would impact the overall quality of the product if we didn’t get these in. But that doesn’t mean we have forgotten about them. :)

FiringSquad: Are there any plans for a commercial expansion pack for the game at this time and if so what can you tell us about it?

John Johnson: We’re not talking about any new products at the moment; I can tell you that we’re still focusing on COH with new patches and possibly some new content in those patches in the future.

FiringSquad: What hints can you give us about Relic's next projects? There are rumors of a Homeworld sequel or at least a game that similar to Relic's first game.

John Johnson: We’re not commenting on any new products we’re working on at the moment, all I can say is we’re not sitting idle.

FiringSquad: Finally is there anything else you wish to say about Company of Heroes after its release?

John Johnson: I’d like to say thanks to all the fans, this was really a labor of love for us, and we’re so glad that it’s been received so well. As we continue to support COH we want the fans to know that we’re listening and your helping us continue to improve on the success of COH so keep those comments coming.

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