With all the defensive options on hand, playing as the Brits will offer a hugely different experience from what we’ve seen before. And before you cringe at the thought of all those Jamie Oliver soundalikes, you’ll be happy to know that Relic is working hard on making the voiceovers as believable as possible, with auditions being conducted to search out the right talent. Which is great news indeed.
The Panzer Elite are a different matter entirely. Carota explains their design. “Visually, they’re very bad-ass. They’ve got the stealth look to all their vehicles. They had some of the coolest camo in the war, they loved their leather jackets and some of their half-tracks were like the Batmobile. We’ve just had a field-day working with their stuff.”
Contrasting starkly with the Brits, they’re a vehicle-based army with little to no static defenses. Instead, when troops are garrisoned into one of their vehicles, the soldiers will take up proper offensive positions within it, shooting their weapons from its relatively safe confines, essentially turning the thing into a huge chunk of mobile armor.
Some of the game’s most powerful vehicles are controlled by these guys, including the Jagdpanther, which Relic likens to a moving bunker, explaining that it once took five US Sherman tanks to disable one. Their command trees should also prove intriguing, with Luftwaffe ground troops, tank hunters and scorched earth being the three options on hand.
Let’s face it, we’ve all played WWII titles as the Americans or the British, but this opportunity to see the war from the other side throws up a refreshingly different set of challenges. Mosqueira reasons: “It’s one thing to always play as the Allies, but at a certain point I think people get a little tired of that and they want something different. Recalling the soldiers’ story from the German perspective was important.
“At this point in the war, most German troops knew the end was in sight, so how do you deal with that? You’re fighting for your homeland so that what happened at the end of World War I doesn’t repeat itself. So there’s some really interesting drama. But at the same time, we have to do it in a respectful manner. We make sure there are researchers looking into things - all of our scripts are sent over to Germany to be vetted.”
