WW1-RTS The Great War: Western Front – About devastation and extreme weather

Since The Great War: Western Front was presented in August 2022, an interested fan community has formed. No wonder, the developers of Petroglyph are really no strangers, having worked on C&C games, Star Wars: Empire at War or C&C Remastered. So they can do real-time strategy. The Great War: Western Front is about the First World War this time.

Battlefields change

The developers have made it their mission to present the battlefield on the western front as realistically as possible. The developers explain that in one longer deep dive on Steam. The setting of the game is anything but stable. Trenches are dug, artillery shelling is the order of the day, gas warfare is raging for the first time and there are various underground traps. Cities, villages and even entire regions are completely destroyed by the many interventions, which, in combination with extreme weather effects such as rain or snow, poses a challenge for hobby strategists.

The effects on the respective map are not only represented visually, but also through ongoing environmental changes that can change the dynamics of each battle, as the developers explain. Depending on the season and the progress of the war, there are new challenges for the commanders. During a battle, you have to react to a variety of events that affect trajectories, the effectiveness of different types of attacks, and so on. For example, there are barbed wire in front of the defenses to slow down the enemy’s advance. Or huge areas burned by flamethrowers without protection.

Recurring Locations

The important thing is that you keep returning to the scenes of previous battles that retain damage from past conflicts. Trenches and fortifications remain and can even be expanded; Craters from heavy shelling are still there. This makes it difficult to build new defenses, place machine gun nests, create attack routes or protect your troops as well as possible. The enemy will also have to reorient themselves and will even occupy trenches that they once dug themselves. This should ensure that no battle is the same as the next.

The changing seasons must be kept in mind in the calendar. Regular battles in inclement weather affect the morale and overall performance of units struggling through trenches or battling bitterly cold winds. Artillery performance and the speed at which you can move units over land also depend on the weather. When going into battle in the winter months, the surrounding area is often blanketed in snow and the once lush forests are leafless. A battle in the summer months should be “radically” different from a conflict in the middle of winter, both visually and in terms of gameplay.

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