Not that all the other wars were just a bit of goofing around, but World War One – a conflict remembered more for its bleak, arduous trench warfare than any great triumph over evil – seems like a particularly unusual source of inspiration for a strategy game that will, presumably, be played for fun. Nonetheless, The Great War: Western Front, a combination of macro planning and tactical RTS battling revealed this week at Gamescom, has elected to lean right into WW1’s complexities and difficulties rather than dance around them.
Developers Petroglyph have gone for historical accuracy in various ways, senior designer Chris Becker and audio director Frank Klepacki explain to me at a hands-off demo in Cologne. The soundtrack will even include licensed music from the era. But something they want to really hammer home is the brutality of the war: territory won’t be won in heroic pushes but slowly and bloodily, while collapsing morale is as much a danger as any advancing army.
