The Great War: Western Front blends grand and real-time strategy in WW1

Newly announced World War 1 strategy game The Great War: Western Front says, in the announcement trailer below, that it will let you “relive history, or redefine it”. Alas, it doesn’t look like you can avoid trench warfare entirely, but there’s plenty that sounds impressive about it.

Here’s the trailer:

In The Great War, you’ll choose from either the Allied Nations or Central Powers and then fight your way across Europe. As the trailer shows, that means directing men to dig trenches and deciding when to send them over the top. What has me interested are the features outlined on its Steam page.

For one, those battlefields are persistent, and you’ll revisit the same fields multiple times over the course of your campaign to watch as once bucolic French fields turn into muddy, artillery-scarred hellscapes.

For two, while battles are real-time, there’s a turn-based grand strategy layer above in which you’ll trade the role of Field Commander for that of Theater Commander. In this role, you’ll “direct the deployment of forces, perform research and carefully consider how you disseminate your resources.” So there’s slightly more to winning the war than throwing young bodies at the problem.

The Great War: Western Front is being developed by Petroglyph Games who, as the trailer notes, were formed by folks who once upon a time worked on the Command & Conquer series. Most recently, they worked with EA on the excellent C&C Remastered, but prior to that Petroglyph also developed Conan Unconquered, Gray Goo, Empire At War and many other strategy games. They say The Great War: Western Front will release sometime in 2023.

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