The Saga of World War 2: a Casus Belli Project · Cassus Belli Guy

Appendix I: Company of Heroes 3; an interview with David Milne

March 18, 2023·47 min·4 clips

Designers boil down the Battle of Anzio into its essential 45-minute gameplay moments.

David Milne starts with where the game lives. Company of Heroes 3 is the third entry in a World War II RTS series, with one campaign following the Deutsches Afrika Korps through North Africa and a larger Allied campaign pushing from the toe of Italy toward Rome. His job is not abstract. As a mission designer, he takes single player levels from paper plans into layout, scripting, and final execution. Historical research is part of that work, because the battles still need to feel like battles once they become playable spaces. The conversation is more workshop than spectacle, which is the good part. Milne talks about how a war game can turn campaign history into missions without pinning every event to a fixed sequence. Narrative is there, but it does not get to boss everything around. On the grand strategy layer, player choices can change which storylines appear, so a second run can bring up different material. The mission carries story, but the player does not have to walk through the designer's exact list of beats. The campaign map adds the pressure. A British general, an American general, and an Italian partisan contact react to the player's decisions, gaining or losing support based on what happens. Those choices connect to the military tools on the map. Airfields can produce bombers. Sea ports can bring in battleships and destroyers. Bombing runs and ship bombardments can soften cities or help take out enemy companies. That is where the tension gets interesting: a fast push toward Rome may reward heavy destruction, while the partisan contact may push back against wrecking Italian cities along the way. The episode works because it keeps the machinery visible. Terrain, objectives, characters, story branches, and player freedom all have to fit together if the game wants history to matter without turning into a corridor.

As heard by us

A clear look at how WWII strategy design turns research and choice into missions.

Company of Heroes 3 is presented as a World War II RTS set in the Mediterranean theater, with one campaign following the Deutsches Afrika Korps through North Africa and another tracking the Allies from the toe of Italy toward Rome.

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Why you'd press play

You want the design logic behind a World War II campaign, not just the battles.

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